I feel that we’ve reached a point of familiarity where I can tell what is perhaps my most embarrassing story. I was less shamed the time I dumped over a 4-foot container of fake flowers during an important scene of Paul Gordon’s Emma at the Repertory Theatre of St Louis in front of about a thousand audience members. Though all my middle school sports experiences involve many nights of going home and hoping that my Mom would just keep driving the car until we reached Northern Canada, my foray into the world of basketball was by far the worst.
I remember deciding to go out for basketball. And by deciding, I of course mean discovering that my best friends were going out for basketball, which in middle school means that I wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere but in that basketball tryout. I think it is important here to issue a reminder that I spent my childhood creating plays, singing along with the soundtracks of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Les Miserables, and tap dancing. I had touched basketballs in gym class, I’m sure, but my heart was never in it, and I couldn’t have told the three-point line from the concession stand line. Of course, I showed up for the tryout that I kept accidentally calling an audition wearing almost an exact copy of whatever my friends had chosen to wear, my terribly-curled bangs that hid the acne that was hitting me at this time, and the clear braces that were still not as invisible as I had hoped.
Now Helena Middle School was very generous about 6th Grade Basketball. If you showed up to the tryout, you were in. After this night, the coaches got together and drafted us from number one all the way down to the very last misguided girl who had decided to try out for basketball despite having no basketball skills or the desire to play any organized sport, let alone a very difficult one. So I wasn’t nervous. I was going to make the cast list. Or team roster. Whatever.
Suffice it to say, the first ¾ of the tryout proved to me that I should transfer schools, change my name, and refrain from ever coming near a basketball court again. I missed every single shot in the free throw segment, I lost my breath quickly when running, and in some mock games, I couldn’t get the ball, and what’s more, I was trying with every fiber of my being to avoid it.
I think it is important to remember here that I am a middle school girl, which means that in ANY given situation, everyone else is behaving properly and I have no idea what the rules are or how to avoid making a fool of myself.
Which brings me to the final mock game of the tryout. I am playing my usual sports strategy:
1. See the ball.
2. Run away.
At least 80 sixth grade girls are standing in the gymnasium, and of course I am SURE that they are all watching only me as I avoid the ball, trip awkwardly around and suddenly, the worst happens. Someone throws the ball directly at me. I wish this was one of those moments where life slowed down and I was filled with terror and excitement and threw it in the direction of the basket for a perfect swish. Instead, the ball came at me going about 94 miles per hour, and when I caught it, I did the only thing that seemed natural. I headed for the basket. Suddenly, a rush fills me. No one is blocking me, I am getting closer and closer to scoring, I have remembered to run in the correct direction for my team. I might be good at basketball.
And the whistle blows. The coach yells loudly that I was traveling. I am confused. She’s not wrong; I was definitely traveling closer to the hoop! I look at her with what must be confusion because she looks at me with the disdain of someone who hates their job and wants to take it out on sixth grade idiots and says, “You have to dribble.”
This had never occurred to me.
In that moment I would have traded anything in the world for a giant drill to dig me a hole deep enough that I could jump in and live on molten lava for the rest of my useless life.
Instead, I began taking ballet class, where dribbling is not only discouraged, it is strictly not allowed. I have been happy there ever since.
This brings me back to the year that I was 13 and also learning basketball at HMS. We had moved into a new house and across the street was a parking lot that included an old basketball hoop. I remember bringing my little sister Josie, author of this blog but then only 5 years old, across the street to show her how to play the game. You might think this was because I was good at it and wanted to pass on my talent. In reality, I was a terrible b-ball player and hoped that teaching my sister at a young age might save her some of the embarrassment that I was currently experiencing in gym class. Alas, little Josie cried within five minutes of our first dribbling lesson. You can’t say I didn’t try. In the great words of Shirley Bassey, "It's all just a little bit of history repeating."
ReplyDeleteWhat a perfect rendition of the exquisite agony of being a sixth grade girl with no propensity for organized sports! Right there with you kid.
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