The Sport of Stubborn

One of my fourth grade assignments was to choose a sport I knew nothing about, learn it, and teach it to the classmates who were brave enough to sign up for my "class." I chose yoga because it didn't seem to require any eye-hand coordination, and I was unlikely to be hit in the head with a stray ball.

My sign up sheet had two names - Ivan, the muscular blond class bully, and Eugene, the boy with perpetual sniffles, and glasses thicker than mine. Studying the only resource I could find - the "XYZ" edition of Encyclopedia Britannica - I learned two things; "empty your mind of all thought" and how to do the "corpse pose." Yoga seemed like it was going to be my sport - I could forget everything and lay down doing it. Eugene, Ivan and I lay on our backs, palms up, remembering to breathe, letting our bodies and faces feel heavy, and thinking nothing. I don't remember what grade I got, but Eugene started following me everywhere, and Ivan left me alone after that. Perhaps they appreciated the unexpected chance for a nap.

Had my parents named me Grace, perhaps I would have been bestowed with some. Alas, they didn't, and I wasn't. I never let the echoes of uncontrollable laughter stop me from trying to master a physical activity, however. There were only a couple of sports I didn't attempt at one time or another. I was scared of horses, so I never played polo, and I already hated my nose, but liked having all my teeth, so I never took a crack at boxing. Every other sport, however, was fair game.

Football with the neighborhood kids was one of the few times I remember having more fun than pain playing a team sport. We didn't keep score, and we didn't call it football. The game we played resembled football because we used a football. The object, and coincidentally, the name of our game, was "kill the guy with the ball." (Which, now that I think of it, is actually football.) I managed to be holding the ball, usually by accident, quite often. The problem was, without my glasses, both ends of the field looked the same. Everyone on the other team leisurely tackled me while I was busy squinting and trying to decide where to run. I probably wasn't any more accident-prone than your average awkward kid today, but we didn't have helmets then, so it's possible I was at least slightly brain damaged by the time I was ten.

I always aimed to be a considerate klutz, inflicting injury only upon myself. I had no balance, skewed depth perception and a rare genetic defect that caused me to move right every time I meant to move left. This resulted in multiple mishaps. I fell off the balance beam, my bicycle, and the trampoline, tumbled into pools, bounced off concrete walls and fences, tripped on balls I was supposed to kick, kicked balls I was supposed to dribble, knocked myself out with a tennis racquet, lost a golf club in the woods when it slipped out of my hands, and dropped more weights than I lifted. I would have tried playing pool because at least there were refreshments available during the game, but there were just too many potential victims in too small a space.

Every gym teacher I ever had tried to discourage me from attempting to participate. They were either afraid of a lawsuit or they bruised easily. They would send me to run errands during class as long as I promised to walk and offer to let me keep score even though my grasp of the object of most games was at about the same level as my ability to grasp moving objects. In high school, I tried to be more cooperative by substituting creative excuses for class contributions. I almost didn't graduate because I donated so many pairs of gym shorts to the needy.

Although I frequently viewed the world from a prone position, I did graduate high school and finally mastered a few physical activities. The corpse pose while breathing still comes easily, and I can walk without falling down, as long as I hold onto the handles of the treadmill. I'll probably never master the art of physical coordination, but if stubborn was a sport, and laughter was score-able, I could definitely be a winner.