- a sentence given by the teacher in yesterday's writing class, our assignment was to complete it.

It came as a shock and as I recovered my balance and my equanimity I consoled myself with a cup of chamomile tea, I found myself thinking of my first paid gig all those long years ago. I was sixteen, standing on the hallowed boards of the Apollo theater in Harlem. They exuded the genius or so it seemed to me, of all those greats who'd trodden them previously. The stage curtain was barely an inch from my nose, I was nervous, scared, one of a troupe of twenty or so dancers, and I stood there, stock still in a flimsy silk stage dress, my shivers a combination of fear and cold for there was no heating in the theater in those days.

Behind me, the Count Basie Orchestra struck up playing Jumping at the Woodside. The rhythms, the vibrations pulsated through the wooden boards under my feet, into my legs, up into my thighs, until, in less than an instant they permeated every fiber of my body. The curtain opened, the house lights blinded me. I stumbled but recovered on the very next beat and there I was, just being, dancing - no differentiation between the wall of sound behind me, lifting me, propelling me, everything as one, the movements of my body and the glorious joyful exuberance of each passing moment.

I wrapped my soft cotton nightdress a little tighter around me, and pondered that fear, as with everything else in life, has a timeframe, and that if you can see the whole, the entirety of it, from the moment when terror strikes, to how you handle it, to how you'll feel about it in a month's time, that perspective renders the whole thing palatable. I can handle this part because I know how I'm going to feel next. What a pity it is mostly age that allows this perspective.