I was chatting to a
good pal today and she was surprised to hear that I did a lot of gymnastics
when I was young. ‘You! A gymnast?! You just don’t look like a gymnast!’ (We’re
both at different stages of our person-centred counselling training so I’m used
to her being – sometimes too – honest with me!!). She went on to say, ‘ I thought all gymnasts were
stick thin, petite and graceful!’ Well, she had a point, I was never stick thin
(though you certainly don’t need to be that to be a good gymnast!), I was never
petite (in fact, I was one of the tallest girls in my class all through school),
and I’m definitely not, and never have been, graceful. I’ve always been fairly flexible and bendy
though, and I had no fear of flinging myself round the asymmetric bars or
prancing along the beam (prancing being the operative word; I could just about
manage the odd back flip on the scariest piece of apparatus, but I never
reached the dizzy heights of somersaulting on the beam!) So, I was never going
to be the next Olga Korbut, but that didn’t matter. I loved the training, I loved
spending time with my gymnastic club mates, I loved competing and I loved doing
cart wheels, round offs, the splits, back flips, burlies on the bars and all
that prancy stuff on the beam. For most of my primary school years, gymnastics
was my thing.
And then it was all spoiled. Hmph. My club mates decided they didn’t want me in
their gang any more. Or, one of them decided and the rest followed suit. Ocht,
it was rubbish. One minute I felt like a member of a big happy family, the next
I felt like the outcast in the corner. I couldn’t understand why it was
happening – I remember putting it down to the fact that my peer group at the
club were all progressing and getting more and more like Olga, while I was still
kind of ‘just doing it for the fun of it’. The final straw probably came for
them when we were at a competition in some sports hall or another in Glasgow
and I forgot my floor routine! Jeeso, I’m sitting here blushing as I think
about it! I can remember the music droning on (‘Bali Hi’ from South Pacific – I’ve
hated it ever since!) as I came to a standstill in the middle of the mats in
the middle of my routine. I had a complete mind blank. I just couldn’t remember
what came next! You know that bit in Dirty Dancing when they’re performing at
the Sheldrake and Baby doesn’t do the lift and she starts shimmying and Johnny
throws his eyes up in the air and then they get it back together and it all
works out in the end? Well, that didn’t happen for me! If only I’d had a Johnny
there to rescue me! What did happen was that I just started cart wheeling around
the floor like an eejit, one after the other, over and over, with the odd wee
wiggle in between. Aw man, I’m totally cringing here as I picture the scene. I must’ve looked like
such a numpty! Needless to say, the judges scored me the lowest total of the
day and I brought the team position down from pretty high to pretty low! I
think I was eleven years old at the time.
Back at the club it became too difficult for me to stay.
Nobody speaking to me, nobody being my partner, everyone throwing their eyes up
in the air at me, or sniggering when I stumbled, ocht, just all the usual kind
of stuff, just generally not including me. I didn’t put up with it for very long
and I left the club fairly soon after it all started. I told everyone else - all
my other pals and my family - that I was bored of gymnastics. I didn’t want to
admit that I was having to give up something up that I loved because my friends
had decided they didn’t want to be my friends any more. In years to come I
really regretted leaving; not so much because I missed the gymnastics, but
because I felt as if I’d let myself down. I wonder how it would’ve been if I’d
simply asked the girls why they weren’t talking to me, why they didn’t like me
any more. Or if I'd just kept on burling round the bar. It’s so easy to contemplate and rationalise it all as a grown-up, not so much
for an eleven year old.
I’m ashamed to say there were times, when I was young, that
I was sat on the other side of the fence; I wasn’t a bully, but I can think of occasions
when I went along with the crowd because I was too scared to say or do what I
felt was right. It’s so not the way to go. And I’m so grateful that I came to understand
that sooner rather than later in my life.
One of my old school friends, Debbie,
writes a blog and I loved this most recent post. Just like Debbie and her husband, Alex
and I have always encouraged our kids to ‘walk their own walk’ and I’m so very
proud of the fact that they do just that. Like me, they’ve been hurt by friends
not accepting them for who they are at times. But, unlike the eleven year old
me, they’ve held their heads high and just kept on burling round the bars. Hooray! And I can't even begin to tell you how good that makes this unlikely looking old gymnast feel...
