So I’ve never really been a “sporty” kind of person. I own some cute sports bras and I’ll wear yoga pants whenever is socially acceptable, but generally, the treadmill is where my team spirit ends. My sport in high school was English.
I enjoy exercising and being active. For instance, Zumba is great. Put on some high speed salsa music and just go crazy, it’s basically made for me. I remember when that Just Dance video game first came out when the Kinect got big, how everyone was so giggly when they played because the dances moves were atrocious. I also got giggly, but only as a ruse to blend in, since the silly moves masked my own truly terrible moves.
When it comes to dance, I can do swing dance, ballroom, that kind of stuff. And, by virtue of being a woman, I can at least shake what my momma gave me at a club if Ke$ha comes on. Shake it like a Polaroid – is that still proper terminology?
Because I can do that. I also just learned the Cupid Shuffle (after calling it the Cuban Shuffle for about a year and wondering what made it so Cuban). I cannot, however, freestyle dance even remotely well. I resort to the three generic white-girl-club-moves:
1. I run my hand through my hair and turn slightly sideways.
2. I drop it low and hope I can lift it back up seductively without having to step forward to balance myself.
3. I sway and kind of do a bopping motion from side to side, usually in a “left one, left two, right one, right two” rhythm.
If I have a drink in my hand, a fourth option is opened up, in which I raise my drink above my head when the song gets inspirational or tells me to “raise my glass”. It usually gets me by.
Back to sports.
I enjoy kickboxing, but only if it is done for cardio. I am an utter failure in sparring. I’m not really sure what happens to me, but I think that the combined efforts of coordinating hits while avoiding hits from someone else ALL while trying to not actually injure the person and look technically flawless makes my arms turn into noodles.
Billy Blanks and I, however, get along fine. An early 90’s VHS is all I need between myself and my competition to ensure I succeed.
I was on the field hockey team in my sophomore year if high school for one day before I realized I was far too fat and asthmatic of a child to preform even remotely well on the field. I came to practice in jeans and a Gir t-shirt and wanted to die for the better part of an hour before my inhaler and I gave up and went home.
I find that I am good at running, biking, power walking, swimming…single person sports. If I do it by myself, I’m great at it (don’t get dirty).
Team sports are my kryptonite. In soccer, I get scared when another teammate runs for the ball. In kickball, I kept my eye everywhere except on the ball. In ultimate frisbee, I lose the ability to throw a plastic disc horizontally and instead throw it directly into the ground with all of my might. We have a Quidditch team at my college and dear god, I don’t want to know what happens when I involve a broom and play magic into sportsing.
This brings us to volleyball – the one team sport I thought I was decent at. I played volleyball largely when drinking outside at picnics with coworkers, which may have skewed my perception of my skills. I could never serve past my own half of the court, but I could smack the ball with great force and I have a booty made for spandex shorts. When the first semester of my senior year began, I thought “What the heck, take volleyball. You wont totally suck. Promise.”
Schififty-five shades of WRONG.
Apparently, everyone who was on the varsity high school volleyball team decided to come to Intro Volleyball and make me look like an idiot. It turns out that the point is not to hit the ball over the net and score points, but to hit the ball three times and then score points. And then certain people have to be certain places all the time, but they hold hands and switch sometimes…
I could go into detail, but I think this picture basically sums up the entire class:
Not actually me, but might as well be.
…which I have since dropped.
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