The Ghost of Zumba Past

A look back at a goofy chapter in my life -- should I revisit it?

This is a Buffalo thing: Someone tells you, “I know you from somewhere,” and you do not doubt it for one second. You know the person does know you from somewhere.

From some damn where, as Billie Holiday put it. That is another story for another day.

For now, what happened was, I was getting my hair cut and this other woman in the shop says she knows me from somewhere. And I know, this being Buffalo, that she is right, that we do know each other from somewhere.

So we go down the list.

I go to St. Louis and St. Anthony’s.

She goes to St. Rose of Lima.

She went to Nardin.

I have a lot of friends from Nardin however I went to Sacred Heart.

I worked here. She worked there.

Finally she says, “Something is telling me I know you from the gym.”

Ah! I go to LA Fitness. No, that’s not it ….

“Wait,” I said. “I used to do Zumba a lot.”

That was it!!

We knew each other from Zumba!

I keep meaning to try Zumba again. I really had fun with it several years back. There was one year when one of my Zumba friends and I, we decided to Zumba every day of the year. I do think I might have done it. I went every day.

The picture at the top of this post, it shows my journal from some point a few years ago (with Jeoffry helping me plan out my week!). I found that photo by searching “Zumba” in my Google photos. Google picked up the word “Zumba” written in my journal, how about that?

Anyway, I Zumba-d a LOT. I would wedge a Zumba class in between work and going to see her. Or I would work one in between seeing my mom and going home. I would sneak away at lunch time to Zumba downtown.

If I couldn’t make the Zumba class at the gym I usually went to, I would go out to other branches. Once, arriving at the Colvin gym at the end of a busy day, I realized to my horror I had no sneakers. I dashed over to the Goodwill and found a pair. I made it to class half an hour late, but better late than never.

Zumba was so much fun. It was like jumping into a pool on a hot day. I couldn’t wait to get out on the floor and just dance. The fun of it, you just couldn’t beat it. I got to know other people into Zumba. I would go to master classes.

This was a number I loved.

Haha, that instructor!

I used to love a song called… what was it? It was some Spanish song that started with a P. La Patilla! I remembered it!

I loved La Patilla because, at least in the choreography we did here in Buffalo, all it required was brute strength. This video is a little different. This looks restful next to what our instructors made us do for this song. In our class you just had to keep going and going. Which, I can do that. I might not have been the most graceful person in the class but I could just keep going and going.

It was just a riot, all of it. The other people in the classes. The instructors. Everyone was great and so much fun. Not to mention you could eat whatever you wanted. Sometimes I stayed for two classes. Or went to another class later in the day. This went on for two, three, four years, who knows.

So why did I stop? Things started changing. The music changed. At the beginning we had some Spanish songs that were really lovely. Also we had ethnic dances sometimes -- we might do a Greek dance, or an Arabic dance, or an Israeli dance. I enjoyed that. I liked learning dance.

That all stopped, and what came in was a lot of hip-hop, and just a lot of songs that just sounded tuneless, monotonous. Crappy pop songs. I can take some hip-hop and some crappy pop but not all the time. Plus, it seemed to me the Zumba culture got kind of full of itself. The good-natured neon-colored Zumba clothes disappeared and instead we got all this streetwear. Some of the fun went out of it.

And the worst thing was, the songs, and I am using the term loosely, got really loud.

I had to start wearing earplugs. There was one instructor who, she would think we needed more energy or something, so that was her solution, she would hie herself over to the sound system and just crank it. You would go deaf.

So that was it for me and Zumba. Last year I took my Zumba clothes to Amvets. Well, I may have kept one pair of pants. But it was like Robert Frost’s “Nothing gold can stay.” That reference is for my friend and patron Joanne in the St. Louis Choir. We love that poem. What it means is, good things end. Something wrecks them. It is just how things go.

However. Every now and then I think of trying again. There are a couple classes at the gym.

Will it be different? Will it be better?

I might just try it again.

You never know!