Martha's been taking dance class for two years but this fall decided she wanted to take ballet with all her friends from daycare, not the interpretive dance class we chose. Fair enough, we said. Go ahead.

Shortly after (coincidentally on election night and at an Obama party), a friend introduced me to Martha's new ballet teacher -- a six foot tall, 30ish woman from the (American) South. She was very nice and actually charming and spoke very confidently about the pitfalls of traditional ballet and how it's more important to cultivate healthy girls with healthy body images. She was very sincere, not bullshitty, which made me happy.

Shortly thereafter they announced a ballet recital. Cool, I thought. I'll get a chance to chat again with Ms. Charming Ballet Teacher and watch Martha dance. Sabine had to work or was out of town (I can't remember) so it was up to me to videotape.

All the girls were decked out in their pink leotards and tights and Ms. Ballet Teacher had on a grey leotard and tights and some black cut-off sweats -- very Chorus Line, I thought. And then I realized the leotard was so old that there was very little fabric. The teacher was essentially half naked. Luckily, I had to concentrate on videotaping for Sabine so all I could do was look through the viewfinder and only occasionally glance at Martha (the pitfall of videotaping is always missing the action).

Since the show was very short, Ms. Ballet Teacher asked if the girls wanted to do it again. Great, I thought. Then I can just watch. However, the teacher then said she felt embarrassed that she had on black shorts when all the girls had on pink so she did what we all would do if we were wearing a see-through leotard -- she took off the shorts.

I started sweating.

They started going through it again and I watched Martha and then thought -- I wonder how Ms. Ballet Teacher is doing the moves. What does it look like when a pro does these simple plies and tour je tes? I wanted to see but then I thought -- Christ, I'll look like a total perv looking straight at her, so I tried to see out of the corner of my eye. Good God man! I realized that if I thought I'd look like a perv looking right at her, what would I look like trying to steal a glimpse?

By then I was really sweating but it didn't matter, it was already over. Relief.

Last night I dropped Martha off at Ballet class and the teacher saw me and said, "Oh! I can give you one of my postcards. You won't get insulted." A friend then produced an ad for her next performance -- the ad features her topless in stars and stripes panties (to be fair, my description sounds lurid whereas the ad has a bit of political commentary).

I just shared both this story and the postcard with the office. The intern swallowed hard.

"She teaches your kids? Didn't you see Little Miss Sunshine?"