A Perfect Day in Mesquite, Texas

I have an unusual, but simple story. Doesn’t happen every day.

Last year, I’d started a new job and had to take the bus for a couple of hours to get there. I noticed I was feeling down before I got off the bus and said to myself…”This can be a bad day, or a really great one. It’s my choice!”  So I started singing quietly to myself the theme from Legally Blonde, “It’s a Perfect Day,” and skipped across the street as I got off the bus.

I’m 39, so this must have been amusing to the people in the 3 lanes of traffic it took to get to the median. I had to stop there to wait for the other 3 lanes of traffic to get the rest of the way across. I looked to my left and saw a piece of paper on the grass. I assumed I’d dropped a receipt and then looked again and noticed it was money….I thought I’d dropped a dollar as I’m always digging in my purse and bent down to look.

I’m never completely awake until 10 or so, so I thought my eyes were just kinda fuzzy. I unfolded the paper and saw a $10, but continued to unfold it and it was a $100 bill. I really needed the money, as I had just started working and hadn’t got my first paycheck yet. I saved it ’til the end of the day, just in case some one were to come into the office and claim it. No one did, so I ended up with the new shoes and a dress I needed to look presentable for my new job. Talk about Divine intervention! Whoo!

It might seem a little shallow to some, but that is my skipping story. I also encourage friends to skip with me. They all think I’m crazy, which is not far from the truth, but I find that every time I skip, something really great happens! It’s true! -Dawn in Mesquite, Texas

Jamaican Skipping Magic

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” -Albert Einstein

Synchronicity and seeming coincidences have been at the heart of my skipping adventure from the very start. So much so that I’m no longer shocked and surprised when it happens, since I’ve come to expect skipping and magic to go hand in hand over the years. But this one that happened the other night definitely deserves repeating.

I was playing pool at happy hour at a local bar/restaurant. A fun song with a great beat was playing on the juke box, and a young man who was also waiting for his name to come up on the chalk board was standing next to me. I started bouncing along to the music and he and I started talking about dancing. I asked him if he was a dancer and he replied that he only knows dances from his home country of Jamaica. So I asked him to show me how they would dance the song we were listening to there.

He started leaping slowly side to side and I did my best to mimic his movements. I had to smile when he started coaching me, “Skip, skip, skip,” he encouraged. Once the song was over I told him about iskip.com and my passion for skipping, and that’s when I recognized synchronicity’s magical hand at work.

He told me that the hottest dance in Jamaica right now is called the “Skip to Ma Luu” and it suddenly all came together in my mind. Just two days before a member of The Skipping Movement’s Facebook page had posted this video on its wall:

It was the very same dance that the random Jamaican man I met by chance was teaching me just two days later. What are the odds!?

Jamaica’s Skip to Ma Luu dance was created by a 12-year old musical artist named QQ and it is sweeping the nation. I love how the song calls out to Sydney Australia, Japan, Johannesburg, London, Berlin, Israel, Paris, Toronto, Montreal, etc. to skip with them! What a glorious manifestation of the skipping movement in action.

Skip on Jamaica! Skip on! Here’s hoping the rest of the world accepts your invitation and gets their skip on too.