Jenny Holiday: Worst Pick-Up Line – Entangled In Romance

“So you’re a ballerina.”

That right there? That was the worst/best pickup line I ever heard.

My answer, after I stopped laughing, was, “Nope, I’m Canadian.” Which, I hasten to assure you, made a lot more sense in context.

Let me back up a bit. I was at a wedding in rural Canada. The groom was Canadian. The bride was a dancer with one of the big name American ballet companies. Many of the guests were from the company.

Now, I doubt many of you will disagree with me when I say that having a gaggle of ballet dancers descend on a wedding is pretty much the best outcome you could imagine. There really is nothing that jazzes up (ha! pun!) your garden variety nuptials so much as the cast of Swan Lake.

And, oh, they were something to behold. We were all mixed in with them during dinner, we mortals, and they were everything you might imagine off-duty ballerinas would be. They were tall and thin and starkly beautiful. They pushed their food around their plates instead of eating it. (I am sorry to report this because the food was delicious—not just delicious for a wedding, but objectively delicious. I am also sorry that I paid so much attention. But can you blame me?) After dinner, they busted some impressive (non-ballet) moves on the dance floor.

And as someone whose obsession with the Australian teen show Dance Academy knows no bounds, this pretty much made this the Best Wedding Ever. I tried to be cool, but I wanted to be all, “Can I see your feet? Can I feel your biceps? Do you have any pictures of your costumes? Are you a principal or a soloist?” (See? I know the lingo).

So there I was in line at the bar, when one of the New Yorkers—a non-ballet New Yorker dude—sauntered up and dropped that line on me. Now, I’m not negging myself here—my self-esteem is intact and, I might even say, robust—but trust me when I say I do not look like I could be a ballet dancer in this universe or any other.

“Nope, I’m Canadian,” was what came out. Which made me laugh even harder because my answer made it sound like there were only two kinds of people in the world: ballet dancers and Canadians.

So I did the only thing I could do, which was to collect my Chardonnay, toast him, and run off to dance the Macarena with the ballet dancers.