Bottoms Up!

As a small girl growing up in America under the parentage of the baby-boomer generation, my young life, like many of those in a similar situation, was filled to the brim with structured activity. Music lessons, tennis lessons, art classes, organized craft-making, swimming lessons, dance classes, you name it...

Of particular interest to my mother, due to her own experiences, were my dance classes.

I remember her taking specific care with all of my dance activities -- the right shoes, the proper leotards and tights, the right make-up, showing my new dance steps off to family and friends, coming to every recital with a video camera, etc... One of the dance-wear stores we visited once or twice (since it was a bit of a drive away) when I really needed something unique, had a peculiar and yet ever-so-fitting name which always made me inescapably uncomfortable...

"Bottoms Up!"

Just like that, with the exclamation point and everything...

As I wasn't a hard drinker as a kid -- or rather, didn't have the slightest inkling of anything to do with drinking ;) -- the phrase "bottoms up" didn't mean much to me other than it's literal translation.

When my mother first told me where we were going, I thought I hadn't heard her correctly, "We're going where?"

My brain filled with vivid images of what this dance-wear store must carry in product-line, to have such a suggestive name...

Suddenly I was quite sure that I really didn't want to go, and in fact could be found hesitating to enter once we'd gotten out of the car and traversed the parking lot.

But as my mother shunted me over the thresh-hold, I was surprised and relieved to see that it was just like any other dance store I'd ever seen -- leg warmers, dance skirts, leotards, dance bags, ballet shoes, nothing at all that would have suggested something to do with the literal meaning of the phrase, "bottoms up." (To my great and utter relief...)

We proceeded to shop quite happily for quite a while -- I left that store with a good haul of new stylish dance-wear, and, a new-found fascination for the multi-purpose phrase, "Bottoms Up!"