The Cheese Is Unappreciated

Hey, ho, the derry-o

The cheese stands alone

Or—

On being picked last

If the first shall be last and the last shall be first, I have a good chance of getting into heaven, even if, because of excessive weight, I don’t make it through the eye of the needle.

As my physical ability declines, thanks in large part to a broken ankle, due to Lufthansa’s uneven steps on their buses, I reflect on a childhood full of snubs regarding my fitness as a team player.

Let me first state that I thoroughly enjoyed game playing.  But I’m willing to face the facts that I wasn’t particularly good at any sport.  Did that mean I had to be humiliated in gym class by being picked last when the best and the brightest were choosing teams?  Well, yes, it did.

Has anyone else suffered the shame of standing alone while the captains, having exhausted all other alternatives, acquiesced to accepting you on their side.  Fullback in soccer, right field in softball, D team in volleyball.  All played in purple bloomers.  So, the cheese stands alone?  Was I Limburger?

Oh, the humiliation of those moments.  No wonder girls as young as five were already claiming to have their periods to escape gym class.

Gym teachers are a special breed, aren’t they.  One of the courses they must have to take for certification is “How to be a sadist,” and they’re already one step on the way if they choose teaching gym as a profession.

Our gym teacher in elementary school was brutal, even more nasty that the girls who wouldn’t pick me to be on their teams.  In fact, one time he even smacked me.  His name was Mr. Sledge.

I suppose in every aspect of life there are going to be those who can and those who can’t and snarky girls who make sure everyone knows that you can’t.  Double dutch, anyone?  Nevermind, I played alone on the jungle gym, where I hung upside down by my ankles.  Top that, rope-burn people.

Let’s not even mention the fitness tests the state and country put out that every child was supposed to be able to pass.  High jump?  When you’re bottom heavy, this is a problem.  Why didn’t they have a fifty-yard crawl instead?  And who the hell puts ropes hanging from the ceiling and expects us to climb them?  So you touch the ceiling.  Big deal.  You had to come down again, where I already was.

Outside of school my physical abilities were also denigrated.  My mother, being the type of woman she was, insisted on piano lessons and dancing classes for her daughters.  I’m going to admit right here that my peasant ancestry shows in my body type, short legs and the aforementioned fat ass.  But I loved ballet class and tried so hard to get every position exactly right.

So it was a bitter blow when Miss Scovel told my mother not to enroll me next year, as I just didn’t have what it took.  I was seven!!!!!  I never got to dress up as an elf in the year-end pageant.  How cruel is that?

This didn’t stop me from taking up ballet again when I was in my thirties.  The park district needed the money.  But then we moved and moved again.  Each time I sought out a ballet school for adults.  Finally, I hit the jackpot in Silver Spring, Maryland with Miss Hessler’s School of Dance.

What fun I had.  What great friends I made.  And the year-end performance that I forced my sister to attend?  Well, it made up for her being on pointe all those years ago.

Speaking of which, when I was forty, a group of us informed Miss Hessler that we wanted a pointe class.  Yes, finally, my dream of a lifetime was realized.  I have those toe shoes still.  I intend to take them with me to the grave.

I still love to dance, even if I’m not great at it.  It’s fun, it’s freeing.  I met my husband folk dancing at Princeton.  Okay, we were both klutzes, but we didn’t care, we country-danced our way into happiness.

And now with a broken ankle and the years creeping up, I nature walk, I birdwatch, I muse, I remember.  In my mind I am the still the Firebird, blazing my way across the stage to glory.