Is that a rainbow bursting from your belly (or are you just happy to see me)?

 It was some three odd years ago that a certain obnoxious member of the 4th Grade Team came up with the innovative idea to have sixty-five to seventy 9-year-olds perform an ingeniously complicated flash mob dance routine following the school's annual Halloween costume parade. The other team members were, naturally, thrilled to participate.

For some reason, this past month has been overly-packed with such mundane activities as teaching seed dispersal, European Exploration (hmmm...maybe those two subjects could somehow relate...oh never-mind. We're not a charter school, ya know), subtracting across zeros, and plural possessives. Who has time to dance? Apparently...only me.

An emergency team meeting was called at Zero Hour. Could we cancel this year's dance? No. Could we shorten the dance? No. Could we modify it to make it easier? No.

All eyes turned to me. Most of them were glaring, off-set with the pleading look of a soon-to-be-butchered baby seal pup. "What?!?" I said, indignantly, "I practiced. Why should I be punished?" But then my beleaguered hero complex kicked in. "I could make an instructional poster," I sighed resignedly.

Like the Shoemaker's not-even-making-union-wages elf, I set to work, casting my computer net for the perfect clip-art to capture each dance movement. My friend Kelly came in to help. "What is THAT?" she asked, pointing at my policewoman. "That's stop traffic coming from both directions," I explained, demonstrating the move fluidly. She nodded slowly. "And the pillow?" she wondered. "Stretch your arms up and out," I instructed, "and pretend you're grabbing a pillow upon which to rest your head." I glanced quickly at the door window, hoping no one would catch a peek at Kelly and I 'sleeping" on our imaginary floating pillows. This dance was, after all, top secret.

Kelly was now enthusiastically on board. Too enthusiastic, if you ask me, as we fell to quarreling. "I don't think they should be called belly circles," she argued, "Think of it more as a rainbow coming out of the belly button, Care Bear-style." Fuming silently for a moment, I considered telling her that I had originally named the move "groin-circles" but the resulting google search left me in need of therapy so I raised the hands upward to a less controversial body area. It altered the move slightly to

less pelvic thrust to a more hula-hoop-y action but that was a price I was willing to pay. In the spirit of cooperation (and not being willing to spend all night making instructional posters for a two minute dance), I relented and Kelly got her colorful exploding belly button. When you are caught up in the debate that teacher's do not get paid enough, please reference this blog.

Kelly may have won a battle but I, obviously, won the war. "What do you mean bass fiddle?" she frowned.  I bass-fiddled to the right and then I bass-fiddled to the left. "See?" I said. "What's a bass fiddle," she asked. I rolled my eyes but in the spirit of cooperation, offered an explanation. "Like a cello?" "Oh," she said, " I know it as the German Kontrabass." Of course you do, Kelly.

Ten instructional posters later, we were ready to go. Sixty-five 9-year-olds sat criss-cross applesauce, listening intently as we explained the pictures and modeled the moves. "Those posters are indecipherable," my friend Geri complained (in the spirit of cooperation). Yet, somehow, a gymnasium filled with 4th graders managed to nail the moves, bass-fiddling expertly across the floor. Oh...excuse me. I meant German Kontrabass-ing across the floor.