Let's dig a little deeper into my storehouse of grudges.
When I was going through elementary school we had an annual citywide track meet where the fastest, or otherwise most athletic, kids would represent their classrooms in various track and field events. With any luck our classroom's entrants would bring home a ribbon.
One year, the fifth grade, I think, I got to run in the 50 yard dash. I think I was eliminated in the first heat. But I was the fastest boy in my classroom in short distance running! I had no expectation that I'd get a ribbon.
Boys and girls didn't compete against each other. Except for a few events, they don't compete against each other in the Olympics. But I had a little problem with that notion back then.
There was a boys-only event and a girls-only event. The boys had the Football Throw. Big whoop! Throwing footballs was something I had never considered being a worthwhile use of my time.
The girls got to compete in the Jump Rope. The competition was simply who could skip the rope the greatest number of times in something like 30 seconds.
I was the champion rope jumper in my fifth grade classroom. I wasn't a girl so I couldn't compete in that event of the track meet.
No fair!
I'm sore to this day.
I really wasn't a champion rope jumper. I could turn my own rope and jump very fast. But I never could do the Double Dutch. I never figured out how to get started. I would always snag one of the ropes.
I really wanted to jump Double Dutch. That is what really is gnawing at me after all these years.
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6 comments:
Now the boys and girls both compete in the jump rope event. I didn't know that you were the champion jumper! How cool is that? In the movie "Sister Act," Whoopi Goldberg's character jumps Double Dutch.
I went to the schools' track meet to watch my lunch buddy, Zack, who was best friends with Emily, who had cerebral palsy and was in a wheelchair but who occasionally used a walker.
The schools had a race for the CP kids, who had to use walkers, and they handicapped the able-bodied competitors with sandbags and, I think, with tethers on their legs to shorten their strides.
Zack was holding the tape that the competitors had to break as they crossed the finish line. As one of the able bodied kids approached the finish line, Zack moved the tape away from him and toward Emily so that she'd win.
Shoot! I'm sorry that you didn't get to compete. That blows.
Do you still enjoy jumping rope?
What a bummer! I thought they had done away with segregation before that.
Did they have hopscotch competition? And was that girls-only also?
A lot of things have changed over the years to where we have what is "politically correct." Too bad no one had the fore thought back then. I, too, participated in the track meet. I was on a relay team, and I went to get a sno-cone or drink (or something) and missed my race. YIKES! I heard them calling me over the loud speaker and couldn't get there in time. I still feel embarrassment to this day when I think about how I let my school and classmates down!
I haven't jumped rope in a bazillion years. I jog for exercise now.
Karen and Mikey visited me at the condo and drew a hopscotch in the parking spot near my back yard. My neighbor knocked on my door and asked my to have my friends clean it up.
I'm sorry to bring up your painful memories, Bobbers. Does your relay team have reunions? Can you face them now?
I ran in nearly all the events, including relays. ( I brought home ribbons in nearly everything) I also did high and long jump, and may have qualified for jump rope in the 6th grade. . That would have been because Ed C, who was the fastest jump roper in our class could not compete.
The plate of shrimp,here, is that Ed was the first "friend" of one of my co-workers at the VA...Don't ask, don't tell.
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