PLAYGROUNDS ARE IMPLICITLY?designed to model Darwinian coliseums wherein children are to refine the practical skills of physical violence and emotional torture. Unaware of this, I was excited about my new playground in grade five because after four years of homeschooling I thought playground meant playground and I came equipped with an explicit love of learning and a crew of friends who were all imaginary (including a pet hamster named Rhonda who drove a corvette). My new peers were really sweet and welcoming and did stuff like smear (human) blood on my locker, name me Laura the Low Life Lesbian Loser, hurl ice chunks at my face, get Cecilia the fat girl to sit on me until I frenched Neil, and circle around me and sing songs about my face. I was oblivious to the brutal social hierarchies from which my peers were already psychologically both learned and damaged but I quickly figured out I had to get fit in order to fit in/live. Thus began my quest to become an athlete.
1. FIGURE SKATING
There were a couple of minor problems like I couldn?t jump, and I couldn?t spin. But that was okay because my gift was in the interpretive competitions which are the competitions where points are not doled for technical skill but for skating your feelings. The competitions went like this: no one knew what song we were to interpret before we got on ice, then a song played three times which was the amount of time we had to improvise a routine, then we performed our improv creations one by one. My first gold medal in life came from one of these competitions, and deservedly so, because I did not hide my feelings and natural choreographic sensibilities in my interpretation of The Circle of Life.
The pinnacle of my figure skating career ?was my own 3 minute routine. I had such graceful and sweeping visions of skating to Ennio Morricone?s The Mission soundtrack[i] but my coach, with numbers in mind, insisted on the Back To The Future theme song[ii]. I got last place, the judges said it was due to my total lack of technical skill, but to this day I know it was because my artistic integrity had been compromised.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM FIGURE SKATING:
1. Wearing crushed velvet body suits with puffy sleeves and ice dancing whole-heartedly to the Back to the Future theme song might not make the kids at school stop beating you up.
2. If you can?t afford Roots sweatshirts, don?t even bother.
3. Figure skating moms are uncanny valley insane and I still have nightmares about them because figure skating is like a child beauty pageant except more expensive and there?s ostensibly sport involved.
2. SCHOOL SPORTS, PT. 1
So figure skating only helped the grade five girls meticulously shred my self-esteem until I was a trembling, exposed nervous system. By spring that year I thought I?d try cross country running; cross country was brutal mostly because I saw no sense or need in running long distances unless being chased. At my first and last race, I pretended to trip on the gravel and quickly ripped off an old scab, cried, then tied for last placed with the girl with downs syndrome ? the rapturous applause was for her.
With grade five almost over I figured my last chance to prove my right to live was in the least popular track and field event: triple jump. I practiced my hop step and jump in my dog shit filled back yard every day. I won triple jump and it went straight to my head that I got to attend the city-wide competition (where I was disqualified but no matter, I only cried for a day). My mom has a picture of me in the back yard, wearing my first place ribbon, in the beginning ?hop? pose of triple-jump. I am wearing black platform running shoes from Zellers, an oversized Blackhawks t-shirt and I?m beaming.
I retired from school sports and began swimming in the summers on the local ?swim team? where I never got much of anything but a tan. I was that skinny nerdy kid who always came alone and came? half an hour early and sat awkwardly alone on the bench watching you.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM SCHOOL SPORTS: ?
1. If you?re not good at sports, choose triple-jump and practice every single day.
2. If you?re losing at anything else, fake a really brutal fall and make blood happen if possible.
3.Wear platform runners for ultimate performance. Eat Kraft Dinner with wieners and ketchup the day of the big triple jump.
4. Winning at triple jump will only intensify your peers? desire to pummel you and all of your imaginary friends. You understand for the first time: there is no God.
5. Keep a little pink photo album you got at the dollar store full of pictures of you practicing triple-jump with your first-place ribbon, pictures of your dog, and pictures of your stuffed animals just to depress yourself in the future.
3. SOCCER
Like puppies, kids are resilient; I once saw a puppy fall off a roof and just sort of bounce. So the summer after grade five, I thought: soccer. Instead of playing in the recreational league (I had never played before), I was thrust onto the all-star travelling team because they were one body short. The girls on the all-star team were all tall and tanned and nourished and named Pam or Jen or Ashley. I recall being on field about two times all summer, on defense (I was terrified the ball would come to me, and when it did I sort of closed my eyes and kicked it with a ferocity only terror can manifest), and I was played only when we were winning.
We, well they, made it to the championship game. Our team was winning so my coach in a moment of goodwill and overconfidence put me on, and put me on forward. I was dizzy with Yoda?s admonition that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility to the extent I actually scored a goal. Since I had never scored a goal before, I didn?t really know how it felt, but it just didn?t feel correct. It took a minute for me to understand that I had scored on our own net ? I forgot the whole mid-game field switch ?thing.? My goal crippled the team-spirit so much we ended up losing the championship game and I had to sit alone and endure the two-hour bus ride home full of crying girls.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM SOCCER:
1. Halfway through the game, the teams switch sides. Just tell this to any nerdy looking kid you ever know or see ? it will help them.
2. There is a way to endure a bus ride full of girls crying because it?s all your fault: you endure it. This will play a big part in your feelings of how girls generally feel about you forever.
3. If you?re poor and not athletic and end up on an athletic team full of rich girls who have never been denied anything in their life and you bungle their championship for them, you?ve likely given them their first experience of loss for which they will be unable to cope and their mothers will send them to child therapy. Way to go, working class kid.
4. TENNIS:
The soccer summer was also the summer I tried tennis because they had a deal on lessons. After about three fruitless lessons, I was somehow placed in a tournament and got my picture published in the paper. In it, my eyes are closed and my face is strained, I am holding the racket at a 90 degree angle at my wrist, and the ball is in line with the racket, but unfortunately directly under it, and my other arm and hand is splayed at some angle which makes no sense at all.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM TENNIS:
1. Tennis only likes rich kids.
2. Open your eyes when attempting to hit something.
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5. SCHOOL SPORTS PT. 2
The summer before high school, I decided I would be a volleyball player and basketball player and the obvious thing to do was read books about them. I took out library books on how to play volleyball and basketball and I practiced the drills in my mom?s school gym. I kind of learned how to set a volleyball and I kind of learned how to dribble a basketball (without looking down) but not really.
I made the basketball team by virtue of being tall as I?ve been five foot eight since grade eight. Like most of my high school sexuality, I rarely touched a ball, and if I did, I got it out of my hands as soon as possible; what I really wanted to do when I got the ball was sit down, consider my options, and deliver the best possible result from my calculations after I had considered all angles.
I made the volleyball team too, just barely, and again, mostly due to my height. All the other girls were very, very good. Pam, Jen, Ashley ? all good. As per usual I was rarely played, and tried my best to feign team spirit even though I was filled with hatred and fear and boredom. But I loved putting my hair in a high ponytail, I loved wearing my knee guards. No one on the team could stand me because I would always say ?sorry? and cringe with my hand over my mouth whenever I messed up a set, which was always. I could not handle the pressure of being responsible for others. Still can?t.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM SCHOOL SPORTS PT. 2
1. If you want sports, it helps being tall.
2. Don?t say sorry when you miss the ball, just don?t miss the ball. Also don?t think about what to do with the ball, just know what to do with the ball without thinking.
3. Learn the sport by playing with others instead of checking out a book from the library and reading it on the couch with Wheat Thins, Oprah, and chocolate milk.
4. When learning how to spike, make a cutout of the meanest girl on the team (Pam), tape her to the wall and spike at her face. Threaten the cut-out Pam -? say Who?s sorry now, Pam? Wham!
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6. SWIMMING
Swimming was my ideal sport because I didn?t have to jump, spin, run, spike, dribble, or talk, and it was much more comfortable to sweat in cold water. Our small town Ontario team had just gotten a new coach, Tim, who was serious about serious. One girl from our team recently made it to the Olympics even, and I?m pretty sure it?s due to Tim. Why swimming made sense to me was because ?my coach was entirely intellectually engaging. He taught us about the philosophy of sport, the zen of sport, the science of sport, the tekhne, the why?s and the how?s, he encouraged us to think, but then insisted we must stop thinking when it was time to race. We had long lectures (with diagrams) about hydrodynamics, ideal heart rates, what an anaerobic workout was, what an ideal training arc should be, why plateaus happen, we had lectures about nutrition, visualization, and how to relax at high speeds. I became so devoted to swimming that by grade ten I was waking every morning at five a.m, swimming three to four kilometers, and weight training three days a week. Big change from grade five, though my best stroke was breast stroke, which is swimming?s equivalent of triple jump. Because I was now officially an athlete, my social status soared from the depths, landing me somewhere in the preferred innocuous middle.
I trained so hard I made it to nationals and placed eighth in the country. Eighth. For all of that, it seemed insane. The workouts were extremely painful and unpleasant. Anaerobic means ?without oxygen? and I?d often puke from working so hard. We?d all cry during tough sets. All the work began to feel fruitless. I realized that athletes are insane because they are pain junkies. I also learned that swimming is a really intense form of meditation and it works ? your mind sounds like variations of this: one one one one breathe two two two two breathe three three three.. etc. I eventually quit because I was getting increasingly involved in art and literature, and being an athlete was just not conducive to staying up all night listening to music, reading Sylvia Plath, and ?sketching? in my ?sketchbook.? I had found my peers ? the art kids ? kids who were also initially unfit to survive on the elementary school playground and so became neurotic and creative.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM SWIMMING:
1. Athletes are insane, single minded, pain junkies.
2. To be skilled at a sport is an art and a beautiful thing.
3. Discipline is a thing that really works after all.
4. i.e. Puke and cry enough, and you?ll have a six pack and rippling muscles all over.
5. If you try your absolute hardest, beyond your hardest, if you triumph through mental block after mental block, you may end up being good, but you?ll never be the best.
Source: http://thebarnstormer.com/a-survey-of-a-young-unathletic-girls-attempts-at-becoming-an-athlete/
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