This story is 100% TRUE.

Mixed in with the pictures I dug out of the closet tonight were some handwritten stories. There was no date on them but I’m guessing the 80’s and I think I wrote them for a book of crazy family stories I was working on or as submissions to the local newspaper.

Here is story #1

Being born in the mid-sixties and spending the earliest part of my childhood surrounded by hippies and miniskirts, my mother attempted to instill in me some form of old world culture. So, at the age of four, I began taking classical ballet classes at the Estelle Dennis Ballet School in Baltimore.

Mom didn’t drive so we usually took a taxi and at the conclusion of class, we’d hop in a cab and go visit my sister Barbara, who worked in a burlesque club near the notorious Baltimore Block as a bar tender. It was around three thirty in the afternoon so way before actual business hours.

I was in awe of the big stage and mesmerized by the scantily clad women in their elaborately bedazzled costumes and platform boots and would sit on the side of the stage and watch them as they rehearsed for the evening shows. I remember begging my mother for a pair of those boots. She reluctantly agreed but I ended up with more the Brady Bunch white marshmallow style or something similar to what the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders wore back in the day.

This was burlesque folks. Not naked chicks swinging upside on a pole so no, CPS didn’t need to get involved–not that they would have back then anyway. These were the days of the red haired bombshell Blaze Starr. If you don’t know who she was, look up at the feature image or hit up Google.

My sister insisted my mother allow me to go up on the stage. I could be remembering this from hearing about it but I’m telling you, I remember standing on that stage and shaking my hips with the dancers.

After our visit, back into a taxi we went and off to the shoe store to find those white marshmallow boots.

While we were in the store, a very sweet lady chatted up my Mom. I insisted on wearing the boots home and got my way (as usual).

So there I was strutting around the store in my awesome boots when the nice lady turned to me in all of my four year old ballet dancer adorableness and said, “Well aren’t you just the cutest little girl in your ballet tutu. I’ll bet you’re going to be a famous ballerina when you grow up!”

Picture this innocent girl right here…well okay yes, I’m wearing one of my sister’s falls but anyway…

There I stood, all three feet or so of me with my pixie cut blond hair, shoulders straight, head back, hands on my hips as my mother took a deep breath and I replied…