Rare and Precious

The Adult Beginner doesn’t groove on diamonds.
Not just in a Blood Diamond type way, although it is hilarious to think about how many female audience members watched that movie with tears in their eyes and a big honking rock on their finger.
My prob with diamonds is more along the lines of:
You’re down on one knee in front of your sun, your moon, your everything, holding out a little velvet box, and you’re telling the love of your life that he/she is as rare and as precious to you as this token of love you’re offering-
You damn well better be offering something that truly is rare and precious!
Not something any schmoe can just swing by the mall and pick up for the arbitrary and artificially inflated price of two month’s salary!
(Family diamonds are the exception, as an heirloom is a rare and precious thing. And no, it’s not bad luck to wear an “old” diamond. Who do you think started that rumor? People selling new diamonds, that’s who!)
But where was I? Oh right, ballet class.
We’re in the center, and Smirnoff is working on epaulment. The turning of the shoulders relative to the head and body which gives an expressive feeling to what might otherwise be just ballet robot exercises.
He’s trying to explain why epaulment is so important when he stops and makes a gesture encircling all of us students and says,
“You. All of you. You are my diamonds. I have cut and polished you, and now I turn you so you will sparkle! So the light will flash off all your facets!”
Oh man, Gentle Reader.
You know, when Dolly Parton sings, “It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world” I say right on, sister, even though I prefer Swarovski to De Beers,
And when my ancient ballet teacher tells me I’m one of his diamonds, dang, I’m just gonna say the room got particularly dry at that moment, and there may have been something in my eye.