Again I catch myself procrastinating instead of starting my intended morning exercise routine, again I feel a strong tug and longing to do something fun instead, something that has to do with words and communication, and not with moving around and pushing my body past comfort.
Today I recognize in the procrastination a version of the fear I feel when I have to start a long or hard project. The second type of fear is always much more acute and debilitating. Imagine having a long report to write, or a presentation to complete, or some kind of dry business task that will require looking lots of tedious numbers up in different places, that kind of thing, you estimate that it will take about four hours, but might go to five or six, and you have four hours cleared, and you simply cannot make yourself sit down and start. That fear is stronger and more paralyzing, but I recognized an echo of it in my dawdling today, and I recognized it as a fear of failing. What if I start, and do it, but I fail?
Why would I have a fear of failing at an exercize routine that is completely under my own grown-up control, chosen by me, being done in my own house, observed by no one, accountable to no one, no grades, no having to do this as a prerequisite for something else I really want to do later. I have a perfectly fit, young enough, fully functioning body to do it with. Why is this not an occasion to live in and experience that body, in motion, rather than some test to which I don't feel up? (that I don't feel up to) (up to which I don't feel)
The answer is easy and stunningly obvious. Gym class was a perpetual opportunity to fail, for me, back in elementary school. I really couldn't do anything. I wasn't good with dribbling basketballs. I couldn't climb the rope, really at all, not even one hand over hand. I couldn't do a pull up. I couldn't do a handstand or a flip. I shook too hard to balance on the balance beam. I was slow on the obstacle courses. I made the boys afraid when we did square dancing, and I had a wart on my hand that I was terrified the would feel, and be grossed out by, and view me as an agent of contagion. I can't think of a single success at gym class. Well, one - in about fourth grade, somehow I decided to work on Long Jump, and I got good enough to win a Fourth Place ribbon at our end of year field day. Good enough to place, which astonished me. You'd think I would have learned the lesson that when you work on something and practice, you can improve and realize success. I remember thinking that very thing out loud to myself at the time. But I didn't really go on in sports.
Actually, I did find that I had an aptitude for downhill skiing, and in my first lesson got to go up the lift with the kids who were getting it, rather than the kids who were still working on Snowplow. I was the only girl in this advanced group. The instructor flirted with me shamelessly, which probably added incentive (I remember riding up the lift sharing the chair with him, hanging high over the pine trees frosted with snow highlighted by the sun from the bright blue sky, and he burst into the song - "What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in! Why it's almost like being in love.") I skiied a number of times since then, a handful of times, but I always picked it right up. I even had some lessons at one point to tune up my turning ability. There is a real possibility that I will never ski again, never have the opportunity, and also that I can't do it now because of my ankle injury, but I did do it, and I can do it really well, and I really liked it.
If playing a musical instrument is a kind of athletic skill, then I have always shown an aptitude for that as well. I was a pretty competent cello player, it was always just assumed that I would be first chair. I didn't work on it enough to ever be very musical, but I could do it. I'm a pretty okay singer, because I can read and can match pitches. I had a pretty quick aptitude for drums because I have good rhythm. I was nearly a guitar prodigy, for a while there, because it just came easily and I immersed myself in it so thoroughly. I plateaued and didn't get beyond beginner prodigy level, but that part had a very quick curve. If these are types of athleticism, I was good at those right away, those count as successes.
Morning calisthenics to increase strength and cardio fitness, those are in the wheelhouse of the things I'm terrible at. Like baseball - on the last two days of school when we went outside to play softball, many times they had to bring the stand out to balance the wiffle ball so I could even connect with it, and my friends would gather around 3rd base and shout together, Easy Out! One year I was sick on the last day of school and did not have to attend softball day, and that remains one of the great strokes of good fortune I can recall in my life.
You know, when I think back on all those things I couldn't do in grade school gym class, why were they having us do any of those things at all? What kid needs to be able to do ten pull ups, or climb a rope to the gym ceiling? Are these basic abilities that every functioning human being needs? No. No! So why weren't there any smaller, intermediate goals, achievable goals, presented to me and praised and celebrated? What was that all about? Hey, gym teachers of my past, a message from the Ninja Warriors of my present - Everybody falls! Where was that zen acceptance, that repetition, that additional chance, that acknowledgement of Personal Best, that celebration of what I could do rather than only opportunities to be judged on what I couldn't? Where was that, "Wow! You're awesome! You're amazing! Good job!" that I now get for even the most rudimentary musical performance in a teaching setting, and watch all others give and get the same?
There was one day in High School, I had signed up for tennis, but since the weather was bad regularly that year, we had to stay inside and instead play volleyball, a sport for which I never in a million years would have signed up to voluntarily play. After many weeks of this, we were still inside, and lined up for a drill to practice serving. My arm was already puffed up and red. I was trying to look down and be invisible. When it was my turn at the front of the line, the ball would go everywhere, random, uncontrollable directions. Then I'd bow my head and walk around to the end of the line again, and brace myself to endure whatever time was left in the class, when it would stop and I could go back to the arenas of my success - AP English, speech team practice. Back in line, bravely braced to endure. Then the teacher, Ms. Luce, came over and gently pulled me aside, and said, "Has anyone ever actually showed you how to do this?" I almost didn't understand the question, because gym class had never come with instructions, just impossible challenges and the idea that we all instinctively would know how to achieve them. I shook my head no. She pulled me to the side, to the boundary area outside the basketball court outline on the floor, and explained to me how the ball was bouncing of the surface that I made, and how that geometry was steering it, and she showed me where to hit on my hand so it wouldn't hurt, and she stayed with me tossing the ball my way until I was getting it.
That is the only, only, one, single time I can remember receiving any instruction or coaching in a gym class in my whole life. Thank you, Miss Luce, for that.
How could my life be different if I'd had her for every gym class, every week of my childhood? There is no changing what has gone before. But I can change now. I can restore these past gaps, and I can coach and nurture myself now, in the way that will help me, what, improve, flourish, find hidden talents, improve my personal best, better live in my body, become a Ninja?
Addendum:
I only just unearthed this early traumatic cause of my current exercise aversion, but look! I am not alone: http://www.sbnation.com/2015/7/31/9038201/the-sad-sad-stories-of-the-presidential-fitness-test
And for reference, here are the standards. Looking at the row for a 17 year old girl, there is no way I could achieve these today. 34 sit ups within a minute? a 10 minute mile?
If to win the red badge you had to be in the top 50th percentile, that means half of kids also failed at this test. Why did anyone think that was a good idea?
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