Hanging out with the Jocks

I am incredibly uncoordinated. At school I was one of the weedy ones. In the juniors, myself and two others managed to never play hockey or netball. There were three too many girls for two teams and not quite enough hockey sticks so we’d always stand at the back, stare at our feet and the teacher never ever remembered to swap us in. Instead we’d play imaginary games. When it was rounders in the summer we’d go deep deep field and make daisy chains and subtley, cunningly stay on the fielding side the whole time.

   There was not such a benevolently blind eye turned at secondary school and I was in different classes to my two old compadres. This was the time of picking teams and I’d always get selected last. It’s not good for one’s self esteem, that waiting game, staring again at my feet. In retrospect I don’t blame the choosers; I was rubbish. No, I blame the teacher. I remember once being made the team picker and picking the absolute reverse, all of the hopeless cases, all of my friends. The teacher was furious, the netball game was ludicrous, but it made a point. I hope they don’t do things that way these days.

   I discovered not all Sport is evil in my twenties, via badminton. It was a pit pat affair with colleagues, where we sometimes pretended to be pterodactyls, attempted a left handed game or did a 3-handed game, running around the court each thwack. And it was tremendous fun.

   And now I have discovered Sporty people. Some of my best friends are sporty. I wonder if they were popular at school? I’m still not quite sure how the hell I ended up working in Sport.