what exactly is ballet?

Tonight as we were driving Eva to her first ballet class, she said she wasn't sure if she was going to like ballet.

Ryan said "ya, it's going to be pretty scary.."

"scary? why would it be scary?"

"well, you've never used a sword before."

long silence... "a sword?"

"ya, a sword. what did you think ballet was? just a bunch of dancing around?"

another long silence "yes..."

she asked me (the girls always look to me to translate daddy's jokes) "is he serious? do they use swords in ballet?"

"well, every ballet teacher does her class a little different, we'll have to see."

we were about twenty minutes late to class (we went to the wrong place-losers..), and Ryan warned her that they might have already put the weapons away and moved on to something else. She was so disappointed when class was over. "I'm so sad that I missed the swords.."

maybe next time.