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| The junior high gym locker room- a place of terror for me forever after. |
Ahhh—junior high school. A time when everyone has raging
hormones, you are super concerned about what you wear every day, and you have
to worry about having your clothes stolen out of the locker room during gym
class. For many of us, junior high school, or middle school, as it is often
called, is a time of great change and growth and, for those of us who were not
part of the “in” crowd, junior high school could also be a time of great difficulty.
Before I get into the mechanics of junior high school, let
me begin by telling you a couple of things about my personality. First, I am
someone who likes to tell it like it is. I have trouble pretending that I think
someone or something is fantastic when I really think they are stupid, and I
also tend to just call things as I see them. One problem I’ve had throughout my
life has been that many people do not enjoy being told things as they are, and
would prefer things be sugarcoated, or that you just tell them what they want
to hear. I am also not someone who backs down in discussing or defending
something I believe in, or in standing up for myself. Now, if you are someone
who has only known me since I was married, during what I call “The Meek Years,”
you may not know this, but that is just how I am. And sometimes it has gotten
me in trouble, as you will see in just a second. Now, I am not rude or
anything, and I do have the common sense to employ tact in how I speak to
others, but I just like to be straight up with people.
When I was in eighth grade, I had gym class every single day
the first period of the day. That’s right! I got to smell bad for the entire
day, well, if we even did anything in gym class at all. I had an awesome gym
teacher who pretty much let us just walk the track if we chose to, while the
more competitive students actually participated in sports. My interest in just
walking the track was motivated in equal parts by my lack of competitiveness
and by my desire not to stink when I sat next to the boy I liked during fourth
period. I had two friends in my gym class, a boy and a girl who shared my
sentiments about first period gym. We would walk the track together, and often,
out of sight of the teacher, look for four-leaf clovers and then sit on the
bleachers on the side of the field and just talk. The more popular kids, in the
meantime, would be playing a cutthroat game of soccer, or even running the
track jumping hurdles, both of which I would only have done had a huge monetary
reward been involved. However, we could probably have been over on the
bleachers swigging a cold 40, and the teacher wouldn’t have noticed or cared.
That is what made him an awesome teacher!
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| Jaws is scary! |
The one sport I didn’t mind playing during gym class was
basketball. I had played all of my life with my brothers, and I was good enough
at it that I could actually play with the more competitive kids and still do
pretty well. So, one day in the winter, as my two friends walked the perimeter
of the gym, I played basketball. At the end of the period, I walked with the
two of them back toward the locker room, bouncing the basketball as I went.
Now, and here was my fatal mistake, one time when I bounced the ball I tried to
volley it off of my ankle, and it flew away from me and out of my control. It
bounced off the back of a large girl who was probably twice my height and three
times my width. She was an eighth grader and, even today, the thought of her
makes my knees knock, and almost makes me wet my pants. The girl turned around,
and, I swear, she looked like the James Bond villain Jaws, although a slightly,
and I emphasize the word slightly, more feminine version. At the time, though,
she appeared no less deadly than Jaws at his very worst. I ran over to pick up
the ball, and Jaws glared down at me, murderous rage clouding her face. I
picked up the ball, apologized, and ran away into the locker room.
When I got inside I put the basketball up, and then walked
to the front of the changing area where I had left my clothes in a locker. Suddenly,
a shadow appeared over me. I turned around trepedatiously, and there was Jaws,
looming over me like a lion stalking a gazelle.
“You! You hit me with the ball!” she shouted in a voice like
that of Megatron from the Transformers.
“Yes, but I apologized,” I replied, sounding more confident
than I felt.
“You! You can’t hit me with a ball! No one hits me with a
ball! She boomed down at me. This was probably the moment at which I began trembling.
“Now,” she continued, “You better say you’re sorry!”
“I’m sorry,” I responded timidly.
“Say, “I’m sorry!”” she barked at me like a drill sergeant
in the army.
“I’m, I’m sorry,” I spouted, on the verge of crying.
As she was talking, she had edged me back into a corner, up
against a wall in the locker room. There was no one else in sight, and I had
visions of one of the female PE coaches finding my broken body back in that
corner, tossed aside like last week’s trash. I tried to prepare myself for
death. I can’t say my life flashed before my eyes or anything, but I did
probably consider which of my friends I would leave my burgeoning makeup
collection to. As I cowered, hoping that my dismemberment would be swift and
painless, the girl bellowed one more command.
“Now, say “I’m sorry Amber Willis!” she demanded. Like an obedient dog, I reacted quickly.
“I’m sorry Amber Willis!” I announced loudly. “Very sorry.”
The girl stared at me and said, with the toughness of Dirty
Harry, “Now, don’t do it again.”
And with that she turned and exited the locker room.
Realizing that I was still in one piece and had not, indeed, peed my pants, I
quickly changed back into my school clothes and went to my next class.
Throughout the day my friends consoled me as I worried that Amber Willis would
be back to seek her revenge the next day or the next week or the next month.
However, she never did. I guess she just wanted to assert her dominance and
make sure I understood the eighth grade gym class pecking order, which, after
that, you better believe I did! No longer did I walk in from the gym, carelessly
bouncing a basketball. From then on I held any object that could potentially hit
Amber Willis tightly to me, and I began using a buddy system in the locker
room. I would make sure I was always with at least one other girl at all times,
so that if I was approached for an intended assault, there would be someone to
run for help, and to hopefully get to me before I bled out.
I cannot say that I would relive my junior high school years
for anything in the world, except for maybe the part where I could eat junky
food all day long and not gain weight. I would certainly never want to have to
re-experience the horror that is junior high gym class, but Amber Willis taught
me an important lesson about always telling people exactly what I think—namely
that there are times when I shouldn’t. I have learned to temper my honesty,
especially when someone wields a lot of power or stands to easily beat me up.
Today I am still honest, I still say what I think, and I still defend myself,
only there is much less of a chance of me receiving a physical or metaphorical
beating in doing so. Hooray for progress!
Locker room image courtesy of http://www.fightingvikings.com
Jaws image courtesy of http://jamesbondreview.blogspot.com
There is a third situation (beyond other individual wields power or can beatyou up physically) when it's wise to temper one's natural honesty -- with girls and women who have a gift for mean sidewise comment but said with a laugh (I was only kidding!). The classic catty girls that usually made up the IN crowd in highschool. Your comment to them may be honestly held and even true -- but you will unleash an expert at targeting YOUR jugular vulnerability. Why invite that kind of hurtful response? Especially from the kind of person you don't even admire?
ReplyDeleteThat naturally "mean girl" to other women seems generally not to have a parallel amongst men.
I came across the syndrome recently in regard to--of all things!--assisted living places for the elderly. Do you know that high school "mean girl" lives on only to return to her adolescent behavior when she enters assisted living? True. The NY Times has written about it and the comments the article got indicate, it is rampant. The "No, you can't sit at our lunch table" returns!
I guess what I'm saying, it's o.k. to be straightforward and tell people sometimes what they don't want to hear as long as you're prepared to deal with someone who does the same--and perhaps with motives other than straightforwardness.