Splish, Splash

Splish, splash I was takin' a bath, along about a Saturday night… A friend of mine--I'll call her Carol--can sing this song better than Bobby Darin himself. I can see her every time I hear it, at the church dance, up there singing with the band. They'd invite her up. She was one swingin' mom. And she could swing with her voice and her body.

I think of her as the song comes on at Curves, and I wonder how I can get my body into the rhythm like she can. I wonder about the transfer of rhythm from brain to body--muscle and nerves. I have a good sense of rhythm--I'm a musician. I can dance respectably. But the rhythm is not in my body the way it is in hers. Why is that? I'm thinking it must have something to do with confidence. I have never been rhythmically confident. I don't have a rhythmically confident body. I have always been a good sportswoman, playing softball and basketball and tennis. I played basketball on a men's city league team one year. That was fun--as I started dating one of the players--the cutest one. But just moving my whole body to music stiffens me right up. I think it's partly the mental example I have of my friend that I am trying to match. I can see her moving around her kitchen singing and, well, just moving to her own song. She exudes coolness. It might be practice, though I danced all through jr. high and high school and on into my adulthood. It seems I just don't have the brain rhythm-body rhythm connection that music brings out in her.

What then? Keep trying, I tell myself. Loosen up, don't think of what you think you look like to others, concentrate on the music and the rhythm and your body and making them one. I can do it. Given another couple of decades…