Adolescence. The Greatest Slapstick Comedy Of All.

I got up early this morning to take my dear boyfriend to the airport. Then I went for a jog. When I got back, I began thinking about some of the more embarrassing moments I have experienced in my young life, and I thought I would share them with you, my public, using my special brand of self-deprecating yet strangely arrogant writing.

I, it should be initially stated, am one of those people peculiarly lacking in the physical graces. I am clumsy and prone to tripping. One of the worst injuries of my life was received simply by falling down while walking in my driveway. I have truly awful hand-eye coordination. I was always that kid on the baseball field, holding up their mitt, standing right under a fly ball, waiting to catch it, and then somehow missing it and letting it land on my face, knocking me to the ground and making me cry. One time in college I was walking into the gym during a basketball game, when the ball rolled off the court toward me. I leaned down to pick it up, tripped, the ball flew out of my hands, I went to grab it and I tripped again. Then my boyfriend at the time yelled, “go put on a uniform!” which was really a good joke, I thought. My coordination is so bad, in fact, that I had to work especially hard on the track team just to be able to grab the baton during relay races. I couldn’t quite get the hang of that one. You know, where one runner puts their hand behind and the other one slaps the baton into their palm? Way too challenging for Yours Truly.

It was in 7th grade, inarguably the worst year of my entire life, that the first most embarrassing thing happened to me. Since our school only had about 10 girls in it, everyone was heavily pressured if not downright forced to take part in all the sports our school offered. Consequently, I was an unwilling and sullen member of the JV volleyball and basketball teams. During basketball season, I had of course done the classic fumble of scoring a basket for the other team, as well as missing quite a few passes. My dad made me wear “croakies” so my glasses wouldn’t fall off. Croakies, which look so good on our friend Steve, were not as flattering on a 12 year old girl with an awkwardly androgynous haircut and spindly arms which looked you could just snap them plumb off. It seemed that in Middle School, whenever I found myself on the verge of being able to say, with a sigh of relief, “it can’t get any worse,” it would in fact get worse. That would be when my mom would roll out the horrendous green and yellow plaid culottes my grandmother sent me and, for reasons still undisclosed, force me to wear them to school one day. Or that would be when my father would pull out the croakies. Or I would break my jaw and spend the rest of the school year with a face full of wire, unable to speak or eat. Or my orthodontist would put a spacer in my mouth which would widen the cartilage in my head, giving me an 1/8 inch gap between my front teeth and a pretty killer speech impediment. Or I would forget myself and use a word like “infatuated” or “indubitably” and everyone would point and laugh at the fucking nerd.

Anyway, so there I was, on the volleyball team. There were only 5 or 6 of us, so I couldn’t even have the luxury of being benched for entire games, as everyone included me wished fervently could be the case. I actually had to play, and play A LOT. Consistently bewildered not only by the physical demands but by the actual RULES of the game, I was barraged on all sides by the jeers of my teammates, many of whom hated me, and by the commands of my coach, a woman whom I adored but who could nonetheless never make me understand in which direction I was supposed to “rotate.” This is a strange feature of the unathletic person. It’s not just that we are physically awkward. It’s like, even after literally years of playing kickball, we still somehow remain unsure about the rules. How does the game WORK? You would think this would be impossible but in my experience at least it is very real. Even now, looking back, the actual game of volleyball seems to me mysterious and hazy. Or for example literally half of my extended family is comprised of football coaches, and I have GENUINELY no idea how the game of football works. It is UTTERLY mysterious to me, like the dreamed rituals of ancient druids.

Anyway, I was a daydreamer, prone to forgetting which team I was on in kickball, continuing to stand on first base wishing I was at home reading Lonesome Dove, until being surprised by another runner screaming at me to “go! go!” Many times I remember standing on the volleyball court, staring dreamily into the distance, while the ball landed a few feet away from me and bounced away. I remember being embarrassed by my kneepads, which I felt were not the “cool” kind.

The thing is, there were girls on the team who were totally good, you know? I can still see them in my mind’s eye, vigorous and vibrant and knowing how to use banana clips in their amazing hair. Even the dreaded Erin, my arch nemesis–they were all good. They could do an overhead serve. Some of them could actually spike! So I was out of my element in terms of temperament, but also in terms of my actual capabilities. It was a nightmarish time for me. One day in the locker room I pulled on my locker door, which was stuck, and the entire wall of lockers tilted and fell on top of me. I got my knees up at the last minute, which possibly saved my life or at least my ribcage, and then the rest of the team, shrieking hysterically, hoisted the row of lockers off me and helped me to my feet. When I think of my tenure in middle school sports, my mind keeps returning to the clumsy way I managed to make a wall of lockers fall on top of me. The experience just sort of typifies that entire time in my life, somehow.

So. One day, it was some sort of championship game. Finals. Something like that. Rich ski resort versus farming town. The gym was packed with spectators, including my father, who was photographing the event for the newspaper. Near the end of a very close game, it was unfortunately my turn to serve. I walked to my place and waited for the ref to roll me the ball. The crowd was respectfully hushed. The ball rolled toward me. I leaned down to pick it up, and somehow my feet became entangled in the ball (?) and I fell, flat-out, straight onto my back. Like a tree. I fell hard, and bit my tongue in the process. I felt my spine compact painfully. My glasses flew off my face and landed 5 feet away, where they spun cinematically for several rotations. Damn it! That was why my dad wanted me to wear the fucking croakies!

I lay on my back for a moment, near-fainting with the mortification of it all. How could I be brave enough to stand up, much less continue with the game, much less actually SERVE? I remember seeing this girl Rachel’s face, appalled, staring at me, her mouth a wide “O” in her face. A shocked silence pervaded. Then my father stood up, laughing, and yelled, “STOP SHOWING OFF!”

Then the laughter began. My father later said, “I was trying to help you out.”

It was pretty awesome. A few years ago I was at home, visiting, and someone actually brought this story up. I thought I was the only person who could possibly remember it, but no. Apparently these things take more than my lifetime to fade away.

It’s still not as bad as my high school mentor who, during a volleyball game, looked down and realized her shorts had somehow fallen off and were around her ankles.

Or my friend Susan’s sister, who was standing in a bookstore calmly reading a magazine until Susan ran up and informed her that the elastic in her skirt had broken and that her skirt was pooled around her ankles and she was standing there in her underwear and a slinky tank top.

Yours Truly, in fact, really never found her “calling” in the sports-related activities sphere until high school, when I realized that when you run on the track tream, you don’t have to catch or throw balls, set or spike, or learn how to do pole-flips (this refers to ballet skiing, a sport I was involved in with which many of you are no doubt unfamiliar. In fact, during ballet skiing practice, I was always the one to do a face-plant into the snow and nearly decapitate myself by violently flipping over backwards. I also broke my jaw in two places while ballet skiing. I had amnesia for several hours and later got my jaw wired shut, at which point the bones in my face healed together crookedly). Yes, track was the sport for me. It didn’t even pose the very basic risk I had faced on the cross-country team, namely, “getting lost while running a race” (true story(ies)).

It was at a track meet my junior year that the second most embarrassing thing happened to me. I had just run my race (the 1500), and was feeling sick and faint. So I stumbled onto our team bus, which was deserted, grabbed somebody’s pillow, and fell deeply asleep. When I woke up, there were voices all around me. People were stepping over my legs, which were stretched across two seats. I slowly realized that I didn’t recognize any of the voices. A few moments later, I realized that I had fallen asleep on the wrong bus.

A wash of cold terror flooded my body. I continued feigning sleep (an excellent defense) until they all exited the bus to go watch a teammate’s race. Then I got up, peered around, and slunk away.

It has many times been pointed out to me that this story would be a lot better if the bus had actually driven away, back to a different town, and I had woken up at night on an abandoned schoolbus in an unfamiliar place, shivering in my track uniform. I agree, but unfortunately that’s not the way it went.

When I think of adolescence, I just get this vague image of a person reeling around like a drunk, falling into swimming pools, upsetting tables onto themselves, walking around with their underwear hanging out, tripping and sprawling face down on the floor, stepping on rakes and the rakes hitting them in the face, slipping on banana peels, etc.
No matter how old and achey and wrinkled I get, I can only feel deep relief that that time in my life is over.