who are you?

I've knocked off three weeks of kickboxing. I'm generally feeling pretty good about life. I fit in a dress that made my back look like I had cleavage and I'm selling sweet tickets to the gun show.

The classes go in the same manner. We warm up, we sweat, we squat, than we punch and kick, then we squat some more. We punch bags, balls even an occasional person, and then it is time to go home.

It's just, for the last six classes, I've been called the wrong name. The first night I walked in with a Courtney who has since dropped the class, but her name has stuck.

Three people attend the class. It's pretty intimate and hard not to have your named called. So the classes go on and the instructor says something like, "Courtney, kick higher." And I stay oblivious until about 30 seconds later I comprehend in my oxygen deprived brain that she was talking to me, and I pant something like "That's a long way for these legs to go." And the class moves on...

But then I started losing sleep, and I couldn't blame it on the sore muscles. I was playing out the scenarios about how I was going to approach the issue at hand. It was past the appropriate fixing stage...

So I got my courage up. I spent the whole day pumping myself up, getting myself ready for "The Conversation" I make it to class and there are 10 people in the class. 10 people. No way was I going to get this one out. So I left dejected and even more sore. It hurt, and I still wasn't sleeping.

Finally last night, I made it 15 minutes early to try and catch the instructor. I awkwardly approached her and tried to bring up the subject. Her entire frame would fit into mine, twice. She has maybe 5 feet on her. I can't squat lower than how tall she is, and yet it's still intimidating and the subject keeps getting skirted. I hear people talking out the door and I blurt out way too loudly, 'you've got my name wrong.'  We do the obligatory back and forth, i'm sorrys and the it's no big deals and talk about always getting names wrong.

Class starts, we kick and squat and squat and squat and squat. As we wrap up, gather our things and walk out the door, the instructor yells after me...

'Shelby, see you Thursday...'

And so, the show starts again....