We are having a student-teacher kickball game at school today.
Of course, when I say “we”, I mean everyone else.
I won’t play.
Ever.
Oh the kids have asked me to play repeatedly over the last few weeks
(just like they’ve asked me to play in the student-teacher end-of-year
volleyball game EVERY SINGLE YEAR even though I always politely answer, “No”),
but I keep excusing myself and turning them down. They walk away sad and dejected, and I’m
sorry I send them to that place, but that’s just the way it has to be. I won’t play organized sports, not even for
cute little kids.
Now before you accuse me of being a heartless jerk bent on dashing
children’s hopes and dreams, I should tell you that I’m game to do almost
anything else other than organized sports.
In years past, I have allowed my students to paint my face green for a
day as the result of a lost challenge, I have offered to shave off my mustache
numerous times (which would effectively make me appear be twelve again), I’ve
ridden countless amusement park rides with countless kids just because they
asked me to, I’ve spent thousands of dollars of my own money on experiments and
music and supplies to make things interesting and fun, I’ve come in early for
STUCO meetings and pulled all-nighters putting together the yearbook, I’ve
cooked breakfast for my entire class, I’ve trusted them in the bowels of caves
and on the tops of soaring granite boulders (teaching is NOT for the faint of
heart), and I’ve learned to rap for them.
I was even a three-hundred-pound drag queen for a class that wasn’t even
mine in the talent show one year. You
need something done, no matter how strange or odd or silly or bizarre? I’m your man!
But don’t ask me to play organized sports.
Why?
Oh that’s easy.
I suck.
At least, that’s what I was told when I was a kid. Often.
Repeatedly. By everyone.
Okay, “told” is an understatement.
I was teased and berated and vilified over my pathetic athletic ability.
And those words cut me to the core.
Truth be told, I am admittedly quite uncoordinated. I have always been that way, and I have
always been painfully aware of it without the need of anyone pointing it out to
my attention. I can’t serve a volleyball
well enough to make it over the net. I
don’t understand a single thing about football.
I can’t dribble a basketball with my hands or a soccer ball with my
feet. DO NOT ask me to hit a fast-flying
baseball with that tiny stick, and bowling was never bowling with me-- it was
guttering!
But the worst?
The worst was always kickball.
My fear and loathing of organized sports most definitely began with
elementary school kickball.
Kickball was an institution unto itself in the little town I moved into
and grew up in. If you were a child of
the early 80’s living in Iola, Kansas, you were expected to play kickball. If the weather was at all decent, we played
kickball in PE where Mrs. Yokum tried and tried to teach me how to kick that
stupid ball. I can still see the pitcher
haunch over and draw his arm back to deliver the pitch with that evil gleam in
his eyes assured that I would miss it.
And I did.
Always.
Groans of disgust from my teammates.
Uproarious laughter from the other team.
Shame and humiliation on me.
If there were reward days, especially in fourth grade, the kids always voted
to play kickball. Our teacher, Mrs. Hawk,
would appoint herself referee and hush even the faintest hint of a jeer or jibe
with one steely glance from behind her thick glasses-- at least while she was
looking. The moment she would turn away
(usually to reapply that garish Avon red lipstick), the ribbing would start and
I knew another hellacious game would ensue resulting in anger and shunning from
the other kids.
And recess? Man, don’t even get
me started on recess. Thankfully, at
least then, I could opt out and not play the game. Of course, I’d spend the rest of the time
playing by myself because every-stinkin’-one else was playing-- you guessed
it-- kickball.
The worst part of the experience, though, was picking teams. If you’re cursed like me, you’ve been there
and know what I’m talking about. Nothing
stinks more than being picked last, by every captain, every time. Actually, it’s not so much being picked last
as it is becoming the kickball equivalent of leftovers-- no one wants you and everyone
complains when they get stuck with you.
When the jocks were captains, they flaunted how much they hated getting
stuck with me. When my friends were
captains, all sense of loyalty fizzled away as they too realized they were
stuck with me. Heck, in the rare
instances when the nerds and other outcasts (the few that I hypocritically
perceived as being even lower than the social ladder than myself) were
captains, they seized the moment of realization that for once even they were
superior and any shred of decency was thrown to the wolves.
Man, I hated kickball.
I STILL hate kickball.
So here I am, forty plus years after those terrible elementary school
years where the fear and loathing of organized sports took root in my soul, and
I continue to get all jittery and nauseous when I’m asked to play. I’m sure many of you won’t understand, especially
those of you who are good at sports or we’re never ridiculed for your lack of
skill. Some of you may even be reading
this and thinking, “Dude, it’s like forever ago-- get over it.” Hmmmm.
Tell that to the grown man who refuses to sing the National Anthem at a
ballgame because he was told he can’t sing.
Tell that to the mom that dreads cooking for her own family because her
husband told her she couldn’t compare to his mom. Tell that to the fat kid who makes up excuse
after excuse to get out of swimming in gym class because the other boys laugh
at him and point at his belly (that kid was me). Tell that to the teenage girl who cuts
herself because she was told she was ugly.
Tell that to me and I’ll tell you to shut up.
Never think for a moment that words don’t hurt.
Maybe you’re made of stiffer stuff than I, but I doubt it.
Having said all that, I have actually let go of the animosity I held
for every kid that teased me, even though those wounds still persist. It’s as if the infection has healed, but the scab
is still fresh and painful. I can
forgive ignorance, I can forgive with the knowledge that hurt people hurt people, and I can forgive childish
stupidity because, after all, children aren’t always mature enough to understand
the knife’s edge that are their words.
However, that doesn’t mean for one second that I want to rip the scab
off and bleed again. I will forgive the
perpetrator, but still have no desire to revisit the act.
You can ask me, but I will not play kickball.
Ever.
Okay, maybe someday I will, but not today.
Enjoy the game.
I’ll cheer from the sidelines.