i got dance in my pants

Three years old was "too young" to participate in Miss Linda's Ballet Academy in the mid-seventies in Columbus, Ohio . . . or so it had been decreed.  "Ballet I" For Children would consist of primarily five-year-olds, though Linda Robinson would occasionally accept a "Mature Four."

I was not yet four.

To say I was a "Mature Three" prances beyond oxymoron and does a double pirouette on the word "lie."  My mother is a truthful lady, so she didn't even try.

Thus, week after week, three-year-old me was expected to wait patiently for 30 or 40 minutes of torture as the Fives and "Mature" Fours plie-ed and relevee-d and -oh!- performed leaps across the floor diagonally (!) at Miss Linda's store-front-sorry-excuse-for-a studio in suburban Ohio on Wednesdays at 4:00.

Cut my three-year-old heart out.

I will die.

6 inches of st. patrick's day

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St. Patrick's Day had been a rough day.
Teenagers in green tights under scandalously short shorts and shamrock make-up cluttered the streets, the sidewalks, and even Central Park.  Why are you in Central Park?  There is nothing adolescently sexy about this place.  They must have been Juniors or Seniors in high school because their clothes were just provocative enough that they might be confused with college kids, but their presentational smoking was not.
She glanced lazily in their direction, not wanting to be bothered, not wanting to look their youth in the face, or in the midriff, or anywhere.