I have never been good at athletics. Well except for maybe when I was a young child but aren't all young children athletic in some way or form. I can tell you one thing that I was never: graceful. There are pictures of a 5ish old me at my gymnastics class to prove that. It was around middle school that I lost an resemblance of that child "athlete" in me. So what did people like me hate in high school? Gym.
We had to take gym, it was mandatory (not all 4 years, thank god). My freshman year the gym class was divided into boys and girls. The vaginas would do synchronized swimming, archery, scooter games, field hockey etc. The penises (what is the plural form of penis anyway?) would play flag football, basketball, weight trainings. Any undetermined genital did not exist in my school, as far as I knew.
My sophomore year, that is when the gym classes were integrated, and instead separated into Gym "A" (the old "boys" curriculum) and Gym "B" (the old "girls" curriculum). It might be surprising to find out that I went ahead and enrolled myself in Gym A. I don't really know why. Maybe I felt like I had something to prove.
It was horrendous. The girls that were in the class with me were the athletic popular girls, that for the most part hated or ignored me and the guys just hated me for sucking at every activity we participated in. I take that back, the guys did not hate me if I was not "forced" to be their partner or on their team (which by the way, the teacher was decent enough not to have people pick teams, which I am sure I would be next to last chosen). You know the teacher did do once? He once made a list of the best bad mitten players to the worst. Then he made double teams. The bestest player went with the worstest player. My partner, who was good, always stole the birdie from me and would yell at me for missing shots. Good times.
I did have one shining moments. It was during our flag football section. We were split into two teams, everyone was on the field playing, my team was offense. I was just told to run ahead, try not to attempt to block/run after anyone...just stay out of the way. Then one play, the quarterback (who was actual a star varsity basketball player) was looking around for an open player, the only one being me. We looked at each other and a nonverbal understanding was made...I had to catch it. I outstretched my hands and closed my eyes as I saw him release the ball. Next thing I knew I was cradling the ball the same was Baby was cradling the watermelon on Dirty Dancing. I took a split second to smile at my accomplishment, before jetting it towards the endzone. I only got about 10-15 yards, but still...I totally caught it! As I headed back to the huddle, I was greeted by high fives. I know this goes against my "I hate everyone attitude" but I enjoyed the moment of acceptance.
Ok, so I take it back, I didn't have just one shining moment. I had that moment, and a entire shining section. That section, being swimming. I was the only swimmer in the entire class (built mostly of athletes...basketball, football, cross country etc). So basically, I kicked everyone's ass. The first string quarterback was stuck in the shallow end learning how to float, because he didn't know how to swim. When we had races, the best of the girls vs. the best of the guys, the guy I swam against, wouldn't even swim the front crawl against me, because he didn't want to get embarrassed. Wussy.
In reality, I was an average swimmer. Well, I didn't really apply myself. Maybe this is why I was not athletic, I didn't have the drive. What I did have was endurance, so I was placed in the distance competitions. A friend of mine has this theory, most people that did distance competitions (running/swimming) in high school were the kids that were slackers, but had good endurance. Personally, I do think this applies to me. After the race had finished, I was never red faced or gasping for breath and while racing I was usually singing a song in my head or thinking of something else that would amuse me for 20 laps of the pool. I think that if I actually drove myself harder, and trained off season, I would have been really really good. As it was already, I as lower rung varsity.
One true thing about swimmers, at least from my point of view, is that they are not runners. I think the best time I ran a mile was 8 minutes and that is when I was at my fittest. Many of my friends, that were also swimmers, agree with me.
Going back to the Gym A experience...I think this led me to have an automatic hate for preppy athletic guys. Subconsciously, I think they will always belittle my lack of athletic abilities. That is why I like to surround myself with nerds and hippies. They don't like sports, at least for the most part they don't.
I even carry this athletic insecurity with me as an adult. One summer when I was a camp ground leader, I was playing kick ball with a bunch of 10 year olds. I was in the outfield, as it was easier for me to get the ball when it rolls away(faster because of my longer legs). One kid kicked a high pop up. I got nervous about catching it but went after it anyway. Luckily I did catch it, and ran up to another kid running to second for a double play. (Yeah, in those 10 year old faces!). My teammates later told me, "Holland! You are REALLY good at kickball." This made me smile, because once again I was accepted as a legit athlete....errr, by little kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment