Episode 15: It’s All Fun and Games
I was not an athletic child. I preferred to sit in a quiet corner and read a book to any kind of physical activity. That’s not to say that I never played. I did, and I have memories of building forts from fallen pine branches in the country, swinging on the huge, metal bench swings in the park, and sliding down a wooden slide standing up.
This was actually one of the few things I was good at, as far as physical play was concerned. During the winter months, we kids would put snow on the ramp part of the slide, pat it down, pour water from puddles over the snow, and wait until the next day, when a layer of ice would have formed. Then, the next day, we would climb up the steps and slide down the frozen ramp on our feet. You never slid on the frozen ramp on your butt! Not only was that not daring or competitive, but it also could rip your pants or coat, or even get you stuck halfway down and ruin the whole game. Soon, a layer of ice would also develop on the ground at the end of the slide, and we kids would compete to see who could slide the farthest without falling down. Strangely enough, I always did fairly well at this game, maybe because I had a low center of gravity, being kind of short and chubby.
Other outdoor, active games unfortunately often resulted in injuries, and even broken bones for me. For example, there was a game where we pretended to be forest animals and had to keep ourselves off the ground by jumping from bench to bench or running as fast as we could from one bench to another and climbing on. One child was picked to be the fox and the rest were squirrels, and the idea was that the fox hunted the squirrels, but could only get one if the squirrel left the tree (bench). When the fox was able to thus catch one of the squirrels, it became a squirrel, and the former squirrel was now the fox and had to hunt. One day, being a squirrel, I climbed onto a bench, leaned on its back in preparation for a jump, and suddenly found myself on the ground with a broken arm. To this day, I have no idea how or why I had fallen.
And then there were the swings! These were not the single seats on chains that we think of as playground swings. These were two-person devices with seats on either side of a metal floor, suspended from a metal frame on solid metal bars. One child sat, or more often stood on each seat, and pumping our legs, we made the whole contraption swing back and forth. Standing on the seat, or better yet on the back of the seat would create the highest swing. Sticking my elbows out while doing this guaranteed another broken arm!
So, the playground was not exactly the safest place for me, but at least it was, when I wasn’t getting injured, a fun one. But at school, the place for physical activity, gym class, was the stuff my nightmares were made of. There was the requisite rope to climb. Never going to happen. I have no upper body strength to speak of as an adult, and certainly didn’t as a child. Jumping jacks and pushups were no fun, but at least there was nothing on which I could injure myself in performing those. At least I don’t remember any sprained ankles or broken bones associated with jumping jacks or pushups, just ordinary misery.
On top of these ordinary exercises, Soviet schools also demanded that we become proficient on the balance beam and the vaulting horse! I suppose they were looking for the next Nadia Comaneci or Olga Korbut. I couldn’t even get up onto the balance beam, never mind walk or jump or turn on it. And the vaulting horse was just science fiction, as far as I was concerned. Run really, really fast, then push off, sail over the top of the thing, and land on both feet without sustaining a concussion, or breaking a wrist or ankle? I think not.
In America, middle school gym class was slightly less terrifying, but often just as uncomfortable. There were no balance beams or vault horses, but there were basketball, softball, and volleyball. For someone as unathletic as I was (and still am), these gym class activities combined the horror of being picked for a team with the terror of flying balls, which often seemed to be aimed directly at me.
There were also other, much more pleasant gym class activities, such as square dancing and disco dancing, at least in middle school. I may not have understood what do-ci-do or promenade meant, but dancing was enjoyable, and I could follow square dance moves and have fun doing it. The Hustle was easy, and since everyone looked equally dorky doing it in middle school, it was fun! People still look equally dorky dancing The Hustle!
In high school, gym often still involved the dreaded basketball and volleyball, with the addition of the equally awful track running. But there was also tennis, which, oddly enough, I enjoyed and wasn’t terrible at. And, for some reason, my high school also included golf as part of gym, even though there was no golf course available to us, and for safety’s sake we used pine cones instead of golf balls. So, golf was kind of fun and silly and certainly benign enough. Other than that, I spent a whole bunch of time on the bleachers, suffering from imaginary cramps, when I didn’t want to participate in whatever dreadful, life-threatening activity gym teachers were forcing on us on any given day.
In high school, I was also faced with the uncomfortable reality of downhill skiing. At that point, we lived in Washington state, only thirty miles from the mountains of Idaho, and everyone I knew loved to ski! I had learned to cross-country ski as a child, but this was different. Cross-country skiing, as I had learned it, was a pretty easy glide through snowy fields and woods, usually on pre-existing tracks, made by the skiers who were there before. You just moved your arms and legs, and off you went. As long as you didn’t get too close to anyone ahead of you, and nobody behind you got too close to you, there was very little chance of accident or injury.
But downhill skiing was a whole other proposition. Strap a couple of wooden planks to your feet, get to the top of a mountain, and then hurl yourself off and slide at inhuman speeds down the side of the aforementioned mountain until you somehow stop at the bottom without running into anything or anyone. Then, do it all over again. Thank you, no! If I broke bones falling off benches and swinging on a playground swing, I was pretty sure any attempt at downhill skiing would end with me in traction or worse! So, when friends invited me to go with them on a ski trip, I would politely decline and spend my weekend in a quiet corner with a book. So much better!
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