{"id":920,"date":"2012-09-13T13:22:31","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T11:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=920"},"modified":"2012-11-08T21:36:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T20:36:05","slug":"zumba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=920","title":{"rendered":"\u00a1Zumba!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zumba<\/a>There are fifteen women in the room, all dressed in leotard-like work out gear. There is one other man. As I walk in, his eyes grow large,\u00a0 \u201cHey, another dude!\u201d He shakes my hand with true vigor.<\/p>\n

I smile as my face explodes into various shades of red. My hopes for a discreet entrance have been dashed. Everyone looks at me. Someone points, but there\u2019s a chance that occurs in my head. The teacher comes in; she is fit, tight, toned, muscular, beautiful, cheery, and excited. \u201cLet\u2019s get started!\u201d she shouts.<\/p>\n

Just then, Colombian hip hop music begins rattling the walls and everyone in the room begins following the lead of the instructor. I have no choice but to attempt to move my arms and legs in a fashion last attempted during an LSD-fueled Haka.<\/p>\n

Gin always gets me in trouble. I have always known this. And not even a lot of gin. For some reason, even the minutest contact between distilled junipers berries and my brain results in the wildest ideas sounding reasonable. I have found myself in all manners of situations: helping strangers move house, running in a 10K race the following morning, pet watching a tarantula and skinny dipping in the middle of the day.<\/p>\n

And now it got me into a Zumba lesson.<\/p>\n

After four(teen) gin and tonics and talking history with an old friend, I promised his daughter that I\u2019d go to her Zumba lesson later that week. The juniper berries promised that it was a great idea; it would be an interesting experience, give me the opportunity to ogle women in tight pants, and dance around. So, if you live under a rock and haven\u2019t heard of it, Zumba is a fitness program that involves dancing and aerobic exercise. To watch a Zumba class is sort of like watching a homosexual street gang prepare for a rumble. To take part in a Zumba class is not nearly as humorous. Classes last an hour and there is not one minute during which you are stationary.<\/p>\n

After twenty minutes I am sweating so badly that I fear the women in the class are contemplating calling 911 for me. It is an exhausting workout involving movements that are so unnatural for a man of my stiffness that I truly believed that I was going to lose consciousness. Still, the instructor\u2019s enthusiasm is incredibly infectious and, at minute 22, I promise that I will continue moving in order to not disappoint her. At minute 26, I am plotting a Coup d’\u00e9tat that is thwarted for two reasons. First, she is a childhood friend and second, she would, quite frankly, kick my ass in front of fifteen women and a man who is overly excited to see me.<\/p>\n

At minute 27 the door opens and a man comes rushing in, drops a towel against the wall and jumps into formation as though this was planned. We make a move which involves turning in a clockwise motion. The implications of this are that instead of being in the back of the class hiding, I am now in the front of the class not sweating and flailing.<\/p>\n

As the class stares into my soaked shirt, I hear a man’s voice from behind me, “Wow, another dude!”<\/p>\n

The class ends and I am incapacitated. My mom has made steaks for dinner and I am drizzling it with A1 in my head. The two men are very friendly, pat me on the waterlogged back and ask me if I enjoyed it. I say that I did, somewhat surprised to find that I actually did enjoy jumping around to Colombian hip hop and dislocating shoulders. They urge me to come back the following week and leave. I don’t have the heart to tell them that I’ll be in Prague in a few days.<\/p>\n

The instructor takes a picture as proof of my attendance. She is not sweating at all. We concoct a story about moving to Prague to open a Zumba studio.<\/p>\n

We both laugh at the ridiculousness of me opening a Zumba studio, both knowing it would never happen in a million years.<\/p>\n

Well, as long as I stay away from the gin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are fifteen women in the room, all dressed in leotard-like work out gear. There is one other man. As I walk in, his eyes grow large,\u00a0 \u201cHey, another dude!\u201d He shakes my hand with true vigor. I smile as my face explodes into various shades of red. My hopes for a discreet entrance have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1EvEu-zumba","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=920"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1116,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions\/1116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}