The Sounds of Zumba, Part Three

By Jill McKellan

It was time to Zumba.  Ava made sure that everybody had every possible thing they needed to kick their days off taken care of.  No interruption Zumba was one of her goals.  The other one was to make it through her cardio revolution DVD without having anybody in the family find an opportunity to get a good chuckle at her.

Ava’s husband Quinn was taking care of some work on his computer.  Her daughter Grace had finished taking care of everything to get ready for school and was playing a game on her iPad.  All was well and it was time to work it, work it—according to Tanya on the DVD anyways.

All was going pretty well and Ava was in her groove.  Every time she’d turn she’d look through the corner of her eyes and see if she had an audience.  So far, no audience and that was a guuud thing, as Beto would say.

The warm-up was done and it was time for Ava to crank the fan on her so she didn’t overheat and collapse in a clumpy heap on the floor.  Instructions to put your pelvic bone forward and start swiveling your hips came.  “Remember to focus on keeping your abs tight,” Tanya shouted out.

“I will,” Ava thought.

“Okay everybody.  Bootie circle, bootie circle, bootie circle,” Tanya kept repeating as she circled her considerably smaller bootie around.

Ava was following along the best she could and was bootie circling away when she heard the sweet tender voice of her little Grace.  “What are you doing?”

“Bootie circling, Grace.”

“That is very awkward,” Grace said.  She walked out of the room, looking like she’d just seen something more disturbing than the goriest thing one could think of.

Ava couldn’t help it.  She laughed and bootie circled harder.  She’d found a secret weapon to force her daughter into cooperation when necessary.  The threat of a bootie circle in public or even at home by Grace’s friends was a definite possibility.  It would be worth the personal risk of humiliation to try it in an extreme situation where an immediate change of attitude just might be necessary.

By this time, Quinn was observing keenly.  “I think your bootie circle looks just fine, darling.”  He smiled and started to go about his business again.  He understood that involvement was not wise.  Ava smiled too, knowing that she was married to a brilliantly smart and insightful man.  He understood, as he should.  After all, he was a fitness guru married to a lady whose fitness had taken a little vacation and was slowly making its way back home.

Thirty minutes of cardio craze ended and Ava’s entire family survived the incident virtually unscathed, except for Grace having a vision seared into her mind of her mother doing the bootie circle.

Over the next days, Ava kept offering her family an invitation to join her in her fitness revolution.  She didn’t get any takers, but it was pretty awesome to give them visual evidence that she was working her bootie off.

Everybody loves a sincere compliment, whether they’ll admit it or not.  One day, Ava received one of those coveted sincere compliments from Grace, who was still a bit stunned and thinking that Zumba was “awkward”.  She smiled pretty and sweetly said, “Momma, I think you could be a professional Zumba person in Wisconsin.”

Ava gave a big smile and wiped the sweat out of her eyes.  “Thank you.  That is so nice.”  Grace would never realize what a big favor she did herself that day.  Her sweet and kind words gave her life time immunity from the bootie circle behavior tactic she’d thought of a few days ago.

The time came where Ava wanted to add a bit more to her fitness revolution.  Zumba was grand, but she wanted something more to go with it.  She called up her go-to fitness guru, Quinn, and said, “It’s time for me to do some Camp90X.”

“You know you’ll have to do all the measurements,” Quinn said.  Ava sensed his hesitation, as those sorts of things can be rather emotional for some women; including Ava.

“I know it’ll be a bigger deal to me than you.  I’ll be fine,” Ava said.  Fine—we all know what that usually means.  “We just have to wait until Friday before we do it.”

Quinn paused briefly before asking, “It won’t ruin the weekend, will it?”

“Not yours,” Ava said.  She was about to find out the vital stats on her body, something she’d avoided for a good year—okay fine—a good two years.  What an experience that was going to be.