You know, I am a relatively coordinated person. I move fairly well, and I pick up on things like dance steps quickly--not as quickly as some, but more quickly than most. In high school and college, I was even part of a couple of different groups of people who got together and then danced in front of larger groups of people. (That was intentionally vague.) More recently, I've been taking Advanced Step Aerobics classes. Ballys has six or seven different gyms within reasonable driving distance of my house, so I've tried a whole slew of different classes with 20 or so different instructors.

My favorite of these classes, by far, is a class that meets on Fridays and is taught by a woman named Keila. I like the class because it's fast, it's hard, the choreography is complex, and Keila is funny. Many of the people who show up every week have been doing so for ages; I've been going to that particular class for about a year now.

I do not feel like a chump when I take this class. Some people do; nearly every week, there's a handful of new faces in addition to the core group of participants, and nearly every week, one or two of those people walks out after ten minutes because they weren't expecting the Advanced Step class to be quite so advanced. That makes sense, as the choreography for most Advanced Step classes really isn't as involved as the choreography for Keila's class.

To recap: what we've established so far is that, according to me, I'm a relatively coordinated person, and support for that claim can be found both in historical precedent and in current practice. We have also established that I regularly take classes that I think can be objectively described as difficult, and I do not feel like a chump when I take them.

The Monday class I've recently started attending has changed all that. The Monday class has transformed me into the Queen of Chumpmania. The Monday class has made me that girl who always bumped into her partner when the sadistic gym teacher made everyone square dance. The one who could never figure out how many times to clap while singing "Bingo." The one who could always be counted on to screw up her blocking in the school play, no matter how small a part you gave her.

The class is called Multi Step. It has two different incarnations: one is called Inline Step, and the other is called either Four Square or Multi Step. Inline Step is fine. It's hard, but it's fine. The steps are all arranged in rows, and it's basically an Advanced Step class in which everyone moves across their row, left to right. When you get to the far right step, you run back to the left-hand side of the room and join in again. It can be easy to miss a cue to move to the next step, but I felt like I pretty much had it by the second time I took the class on an Inline night.

The Four Square nights, on the other hand, are scary. You have a "home" step, and you make extensive use of the four steps in front of you, in back of you, and to your left and right. Moreover, there are moves like the "diagonal corner pivot," which involves hopping diagonally across one step, hopping diagonally across the next step, pivoting on the step after that, and then hopping your way back following the same diagonal line. This is all well and good if you get it, but here's the problem: if you don't get it, you are in someone else's way. If you miss a hop turn, suddenly everyone else is halfway across the room, and you're left swearing at yourself and trying to calculate where they're going to end up, becuse if you don't move there, you'll be in the way. Again. If you know a step but can't execute it immediately when the instructor calls it--if you stop to think for point-five seconds--you'll find yourself at the wrong platform, shoulder-to-shoulder with an unfortunate neighbor who actually knows what they're doing.

I am going to love it eventually. I can tell. But before I can love it, I'm going to have to keep my chump crown well-polished for at least another two or three classes. Nearly everyone at these sessions is a regular; new people almost always walk out. I hate humble pie, but I don't fucking walk out. I don't blame anyone else for doing so, but dammit, I am a relatively coordinated person, and I can do this. So I will.

I really do hate that pie, though.