You Probably Don’t Remember Me (Because You Didn’t Know Me in the First Place), But …

I got to thinking about an old dance teacher this week, someone I took a class from 30 or so years ago. It was a wonderful class, devoted entirely to stretching. Our teacher was beautiful, with dark hair and eyes and a strong, lithe body. She seemed much older than we were, but she was probably only 19 or 20 years old to our 13 or 14, a dance student at the University of Michigan.

Whitley-Anne Setrakian was her name then, and this I have never forgotten, because every time I do the face stretch where you grin hugely and then pull your mouth into pleading fish lips, I think of her, which means I think of her three or four times a week.

Other parts of my routine make me think of other people: Of a certain physical therapist, of dance teacher Chris Van Raalte, of Greg Kehret (who has nothing to do with dance or stretching; why do I think of him when I do a certain stretch? Maybe for the same reason I think of Michael Paoli, an ex-coworker, when I slice mushrooms: no reason, or some weird reason even I don’t know), of tai chi teacher C. K. Jeong, of Lexie, and finally of Amy.

So I Googled Whitley-Anne Setrakian and found out that she is now Whit Hill, still in Ann Arbor, and a respected alt-country musician, after having been a dancer and choreographer for a long time. I went ahead and emailed her—“Hello from a long, LONG ago dance student”—and said she shouldn’t feel obliged to write back.

However, when she didn’t, I felt faintly injured, but then got to thinking maybe it’s just weird to email people from long ago out of the blue, especially if you hardly knew them in the first place. I’m sure Whitley-Anne Setrakian would not have been able to call me by name two weeks after I finished taking her class, because there was just one of her and several of us, and, believe me, nothing distinguished me as a dancer or stretcher.

Is it just as weird to email someone out of the blue as it would be to telephone them? I think not, simply because I would never telephone someone in those circumstances. Telephoning would trip my own internal Weird Meter, and emailing doesn’t. Maybe because while telephoning can be asynchronous, if the person doesn’t happen to answer, emailing always is. There is no possibility of making direct sensory contact via an email; the recipient sees an email, welcome or not, but doesn't see, hear or have to touch the sender.

I have sent a handful of emails to people from long ago that have gone unanswered, so you’d think I might have learned by now, but I have also had an extremely rewarding experience or two. Some years ago, I emailed my junior high Spanish teacher, Mr. Puente, and we had an absolutely delightful exchange.

He remembered me perfectly well from 25 years ago, because, as he told me, he had pictures of several students under a piece of glass on his desk, and one of them was of me.

In the end, Whit Hill did write back and say she’s in the middle of a move to Nashville (I suspect this fact will be readily available elsewhere on the Internet, such as her own website) and is always glad to hear that people liked what she taught so long ago. I replied that Nashville sounds like a fantastic place for her—it really does—and that was that, and it was a very satisfactory little thing in the end.