Dancing with the Little Flower

My second oldest daughter takes dancing at Little Flower, a Catholic school over in Richmond Heights. Found this bad mansard right behind the parish facing west. I thought there'd be way more bad mansards in that neighborhood (bound by Clayton Road, Big Bend, Laclede Station and Highway 40) but in the 4 years Audrey has been dancing this is the first one I've found.

Miss Marilyn is the dance teacher at Little Flower and imagine my surprise when I realized she was my teacher back at Mark Twain Elementary back in the late 70's/ early 80's. We thought she was so grown up but she was probably only 25. She's around 60 now and looks fantastic, wearing the same leotard, skirt and high heel tap shoes wore back in the day.

I learned a great life lesson from Miss Marilyn. The class was broken into two groups for the recital and my friend Erika and I figured out we were in the less coordinated of the dances, Funky Town (or maybe it was Eye of the Tiger?). Thinking the decision was unfair, Erika and I marched up to Miss Marilyn and demanded an explanation. Without missing a beat, Miss Marilyn explained she knew we were better dancers than the other girls our dance group but could we please stay in those dances? She needed us to be leaders and show the other girls how the dances were properly performed. We replied of course! We danced in Funky Town and knew how grateful Miss Marilyn was that we were leading the others.

Miss Marilyn still rolls out Funky Town and Eye of the Tiger for recitals. Erika and I continued to question authority. In 4th grade we petitioned the principal to discipline teacher Miss Chung because we thought she showed favoritism. 5th and 6th grade found us in different classrooms until I moved to Webster for junior high school.

Erika lives in Madison, WI and continues to be somewhat of an activist. I find myself a little more conservative than her and now our sparring is with each other. That is a good thing and makes life interesting. We can agree that our friendship has been long, vodka is good and Miss Chung was wrong in 1980.