Years ago, I took up ballroom dancing. I enrolled in an eight-lesson lunch-hour class. It went well, and it turned out I have a knack for dance. About six weeks into the class, I decided to go to my first social.

Entering that social, I jumped more hurdles than a hobby horse at a kids’ Kentucky Derby Birthday Party. With dance shoes in hand, as I went to open the door to the social, I was suddenly hit by the memory of having been a wallflower at a few too many dances. And what if I was asked to dance, and couldn’t remember the steps? Or I stepped on my partner’s foot? Or fell down?  (Don’t laugh – that really did happen once when, as a more seasoned dancer, my heel got caught during a Viennese Waltz, toppling both me and my equally-mortified partner). It was in entering that first social that I realized how much chutzpah Cinderella had.

If you look up this Yiddish word in the dictionary, Cinderella’s brand of chutzpah goes way beyond Merriam Webster’s “audacity,” “nerve” or even “cheek.” In fact, you should just find Cinderella’s photo there.

Think about it. Here’s this young woman who’s suffered years of verbal abuse, scrubbed floors ‘til you could eat off them, cooked morning, noon and night, spent her days in the company of mice and birds, yet she sets off for the Prince’s ball, unescorted. How does she even know how to carry on a conversation with someone who doesn’t chirp or squeak? And really, brooms make lousy dance partners, even for practice. And to appropriate a phrase from the late, great Ginger Rogers, how in heavens name did she dance backwards and in glass high heels designed more for sipping champagne from than dancing? I want to know where she got the confidence to even go to the ball, much less dance all night with the prince?

You may say it’s only a fairy tale, but there are these types of individuals among us, and wouldn’t it be lovely if we could each find that level of chutzpah to do the things we dream of?