Junior high school gym class brought a new focus. Gymnastics. We were lucky to have all the best opportunities to kill ourselves. Balance beam, uneven bars, parallel bars, horse, rings, and of course trampoline.
My years of swimming, climbing trees, and playing on the playground monkey bars had given me a good strong upper body, but the ear infections had killed my balance so this was an opportunity to retrain my brain or create so good prat falls.
I knew my arms were strong. At the time I held the record for the number of times climbing the rope at Lincoln Elementary School. For those of you that were not fortunate enough to climb the rope - it hung from the ceiling of the gym and you would, hand over hand, climb to the top and ring a bell before climbing down. Sliding down was not an option since you would end up with rope burns on your hands. (By the way - that is not my photo - the credit goes to Jennifer from https://www.pinterest.com/jenniferchronicles/_created/)
When I was in gym class, my 6th grade year at Lincoln we had a competition with all the kids in class seeing how many times you could consecutively climb up and down the rope. Each kid tried with numbers like 10, 12, 14 - going up each time as the next person took over - we went alphabetically which means - with a last name of Nebel - I was in the middle of the pack. I started - 10 - 15 - 20, the teacher was surprised. It was fun for the first 30 times, but as I was growing closer to 50 my arms began to tremble and my palms were sweaty. I finished at 52 - no one else was able to go after me since gym class and part of math was over before I called 'done'. I made it only a half way up on my 53rd climb and my hands slid back down the rope. For some reason no one else wanted to go after me, except Jeannie. She made it 48 - closing in on my record. But when I left to move to Oak Creek - I was still champion.
So here I was in 7th grade gym class flipping on the uneven bars, doing the dead man's drop from the rings, holding my body up as I swung my legs over the handles of the pummel horse. It was amazing even to me. Maybe I could medal in the Olympics in both swimming and gymnastics! I would be the first athlete to do so!
I did hand springs and cartwheels, round-offs and back flips. I can see it in my memory of being a fantastic, graceful gymnasts. I am sure that is just an altered memory - graceful really isn't in my DNA -just ask my ballet and tap teachers! But in any event I could do it - all of it.
Who knew what was lurking in the wings waiting to through all of that fun out the window. That summer the world changed for me in the form of body altering puberty! Ugh! Whose idea was it to do this to young girls and boys. What a completely gross, experience. You smelled terrible - what was the point of that? I can't imagine the cave man thinking - oh that smelly, hairy, bumpy thing is what I want to snuggle with! It's amazing that human kind continued after that first set of puberty hit!
My chest hurt and went from a streamlined - aerodynamic surface to a mountain range of load dragging, center of gravity changing bumps! Really? I was never actually thin - these days you would be polite and say I was 'healthy looking', I would say I was pudgy, so these new additions to my outline were not exactly welcome.
It felt like I went from T-shirts to C-cup bra overnight (sorry guys - that's the truth). I needed to figure out how to rebalance my bike riding, I mean it's amazing that I was able to walk upright anymore! At least that's how it felt.
My arms were still strong, but my center of gravity had shifted. Going over the uneven bars wasn't as fluid as it was the year before. I tried to do back flips, but for some reason I couldn't get the flexibility I had in the past. In no way was this due to the fact that since that gym class I hadn't done any more stretches or practice - I am positive it was due to my new 'look'.
My swim suit didn't quite fit as well either and for the first time I had to buy one with darts! Ugh - thankfully I had 5 older sisters who could help explain to me what was going on - this scary time of body changes. So of course I turned to the most knowledgeable person I could, my best friend, Lori. Who was, of course, just a little older than me and had also just been learning about the changes and what they meant. Lori assured me I didn't have cancer and that this new monthly 'visitor' and the pain that came with it were normal. Sure I had sex education in 6th grade, but they never told you about any pains or cramps. Just the biological answers that the text books told them to tell you. No one said you'd itch and stink!
I was suddenly aware of things I had never even had a second thought about before. The perfume they used to fragrance the sanitary napkins - I could sense it every where! I would blush when the English teacher would use the word 'period' for the end of a sentence. Boys bumped into you so much more often, and my skin was attacking me with red welts and blotches. I all I needed to complete the nerd look was a set of braces and glasses!
Blake took me for my first bra - I was too embarrassed to even ask my mom. Lori's mom filled in the blanks that I had in my knowledge and I realized I would survive this change.
I'm sure my parents had hoped that my change in body would also change my activities and squelch my tom boyish personality. But I had already decided early on - this would be just something I would outwardly change.
My inside and personality would be the only thing I could control, and that, would be changed as I chose and when I chose. No surprises, no waking up the next day and being a princess. I liked me for me and I would learn to like my new look.
No comments:
Post a Comment