The average Radio City Rockette is 5’8” tall. I am, and probably will be from now on, several inches shorter than that average. So you can imagine how pathetic I felt standing in line with possible future Rockettes to audition for the Rockette Summer Intensive.

Usually, I would jump at the chance to grab a Starbucks so early in the morning. But my stomach was turning so violently that I couldn’t even think about ingesting anything. My feet shuffled mindlessly as the line moved forward: left foot, right foot, left foot…

Right shoulder?

I looked up. I happened to be standing under the one and only tree growing out of the cement sidewalk—the sidewalk that I wished I could melt into at that moment. The bird that had just dropped a sticky, wet bomb on my shoulder sat triumphantly on a branch. Here I was, smashed in between girls with legs as long as I was tall, with a steaming, white stain on the front of my black cotton leotard.

Panic hit me like a yellow cab on the city streets. How was I—a short, shy, shaky girl—supposed to face the most prestigious dance group in the country with bird droppings on my leotard? I was a few girls away from the door. My heart leaped up my throat, out of my chest, and into my hands as I searched frantically in my bag for a tissue, a wipe, something.

But I had nothing.

Once inside the audition room, I fretted over the stain as the Rockettes began to show the choreography. When I could finally get a glance at myself in the mirror, looking like a gremlin among goddesses, my eyes went straight to the stain. Rockette choreography is detailed down to the little finger and I couldn’t even get past the right side of my chest.

We were put alphabetically into groups of three. I had time before my turn to go over the choreography—a jazz combination, a tap combination, and thirty two eye-high kicks—but standing there on the side, watching the girls audition in threes before me, turned my beating heart into a ticking time bomb.

Hearing my name being called set the bomb off. I had to tell myself to breathe: in through the nose, out through the mouth. The imposing Rockettes sat at a table in front of the mirror, and all I could see in that mirror was my chest and the stain that had been dropped there by my friend, the bird.

Then, I focused on the Rockettes, and for the second time that day, I felt like I was hit by a speeding yellow cab. I was standing in front of women who I had always dreamed of meeting. Why was I not making the most of this opportunity? I tried channeling the confident girl and passionate dancer who I almost thought I had left back at my studio at home. The stain on my chest faded away.

Five months later I was standing in front of the same women, learning more than I thought possible. I still felt like a shrimp—I was half an inch below the absolute minimum height—but one of the Rockettes, Traci, told me that I was tall and everyone else was simply taller. She told me, “No one is short in Rockette land.” I could have had bird droppings on my leotard every single day during the Intensive and my smile would have been just as bright.