I win I win I win
Posted: June 1, 2005 Filed under: Uncategorized 11 Comments »Don’t get excited – it’s not that. We all know that Day 6 is much, much too early to be peeing on sticks. Besides, my new peesticks haven’t arrived in the mail yet.
This morning I had to attend a meeting about Field Day. As a specialist, I am expected to assist with relay races and, if I were a more able-bodied sort, I would be expected to entertain the masses with, oh, a little PE dept vs. specialists running action or something hideous like that. Thankfully, I have a painful and crippling disease and can’t be asked to do such things.
I. HATE. FIELD DAY.
I haven’t been to one yet, but I know that I am going to hate it. It offends every last one of my sensibilities. I hate all sports. I don’t enjoy moving around at all anyway, but what I hate about sports is competition. I have examined this long and hard and I believe it to be my most quintesential Quaker core that speaks here. I cannot find anything redeeming about it. It is not that I mind losing (as I always, always did in any sports-related thing). I know you won’t believe me. It really isn’t that, because I didn’t care about sports anyway. It’s just that I don’t understand why we have to use our physical abilities as a way to teach kids about winning and losing.
I am all for good “sportspersonship,” as we in schools say nowadays (blech, I know). I sort of enjoy board games and the like, but only with people who don’t get mean and nasty. I do not enjoy any sort of competitive spirit. When it comes out in me, I am embarrassed.
It has been most present in dance classes – ballet was MY thing as a kid and I very much wanted to be the best. I don’t think this was good. It meant that still, at age 28, I came home after my INCREDIBLY ELEMENTARY first yoga class and SOBBED ON THE FLOOR because my knees wouldn’t position themselves correctly. I am too hard on myself in class settings. But at least it’s all me – there was no “yoga team” to get pissed at me about my bad knee position. That would have done me right in (OK, I was done in anyway, huh? I did end up in the looney bin a mere two weeks later, I believe).
Wes is very, very different from me in this way. He loves to be competitive academically and would like to get gold stars on his head for doing things correctly. Because his mother did that for him as a kid. Yeah. I know.
But he does like things his way. Once, in Ikea, we were arguing about vases. Wes REALLY likes vases. It is so oviously Freudian that I can’t believe he doesn’t sublimate it shamefully into something else. Instead he is actually loud and open about his love of vases and constantly wants to buy more of them even though anyone who had an even slightly sizeable wedding received enough vases to hold even a surgery’s worth of flowers for a week. No, we never have enough according to him. So we were in Ikea, and he wanted some piddly little bud vases and I was denying him this in my meanest teacher/mommy voice and he burst, like a small child, into “NO! I WIN I WIN I WIN!” And he did. Because of my mortification at being seen with such a raving lunatic.
But still, we have a fundamental harmony in our hatred of team sports. Thank heavens.
In pregnancy news, my colleague who has been trying to get pregnant for about eight months (though she only finally just read TCOYF and starting charting and timing it correctly) got the bad, bad news this morning. Now I am worried about how she will feel if I manage to do it the first time. But really, our swimmers have it so much easier – we cut out a good 4 hours of their swim time by sticking them where we did.
So really, there’s no excuse for it not to work. Well, except for the fact that they were frozen for a year and then thawed and stuck up there in such lesser quantities. But hey, I got my highest temperature ever this morning. And I DREAMED that my boobs were sore. Does that count?
Oh, god I hope it worked. I want to win at something.
We have a field day thing here, and it’s actually not bad. Even the kids who hate sports seem to like it. Most of the games are on the silly side. Plus I think the end of the year just make kids (and teachers!) giddy.
“But still, we have a fundamental harmony in our hatred of team sports”: Hatred is such an un-quaker like emotion; more of a sports fan sort of thing.
Kidding aside, well done for transcending the inane tribalism that seems to grip the rest of us, especially us from beyond the Hague Line. And good luck with the sticks, defrosting, swimming, and other hideously complicated biology business. There have been quite a few heart racing moments in your ongoing story, and I don’t know you from Eve. Keep you fingers (but not legs?) crossed.
Toodle pip. The Weasel.
I tell you…watch the dreams! That’s how I knew.
Have I told you lately how fabulous I think you are? I have a strong feeling we’d be friends if we lived nearby. Your blog cracks me up routinely.
I imagine the Quaker version of sports as being like the “ungame” – Where no one wins, and it just goes on and on. My family is Jewish but my little sister started going to Powell House (quaker youth retreat center) when she was in middle school and is in August heading off to college at Earlham! She is the perfect little Jewish Quaker, hatred of sports and all.
I understand about yoga – I have a hard time not comparing myself to others, too. Which sucks because I am a) fat and b) have FMS so I’m NEVER going to be able to do half of what other people in even the most elementary yoga class are able to accomplish. I try very hard to not look at what other people are doing so I don’t try to attain *their* goals instead of my own. But it’s hard.
I really literally giggled (and I am NOT A GIGGLER) at that Freudian vase thing. We have more vases than we could possibly need and I keep buying new ones at yard sales. How often do we actually have fresh flowers in the house? Oh, once every 3 months or so.
I don’t know about yours, but our Field Day is NOTHING like what it was when I was a kid. No real races, no tug of war, no competition. Just silly, goofy, everyone can have fun kind of stuff (hit fluff-balls with a hockey stick, spin around and around and then see if you can throw a ball and hit a target, etc.). Thankfully, I don’t have to deal with it (but I just hate the chaos) but I do go hand out popsicles at the end and it seems like most of the kids really do have a good time.
And we *do* need to help kids get excited about being active. My childhood experiences in PE did NOT do that, but what I see today is more likely to teach kids that “sports” involves a wide range of things and everybody can find something that they think is fun.
To stray off topic (quite a bit), your IKEA post yesterday got me to visit Coveting for the first time, and WOW! I had no idea you guys were so fashionable. (Of course, I don’t actually know you.) The egg highchair is, um, interesting. We have a Kinderzeat and I am so excited. (We got it from Craigslist because we have small children in our house so often.) However, it’s not suitable for the first 6-12 months, and I don’t know what I want to do for that stage. I don’t want a big ugly plastic gigantimous ordinary whopping high chair (did I mention big?). Have you looked at the Svan (http://www.svanchair.com/)? It seems like something Wes might like.
Thanks, Jen. I do know of the Svan, but it has a little too much going on for my taste. The Kinderzeat is actually good for babies from 6 months on because it comes with a little seat belt adapter thing. As for before that age, most babies don’t need a highchair. I’m sold on the Kinderzeat (unless Briar eventually caves and agrees to the Nest).
Depends on the kid (early usability of the Kinderzeat). Once they sit well, it works. But some of the babies I spend a lot of time with don’t do well in it yet and they’re 8-9 months. The European version offers a seat post and a tray accessory, and those I would LOVE – then I think it would work well for littles. And I had schemes to acquire one from Sweden, as I have friends there. But I got my essentially brand new one from Craigslist first so that’s that (for now).
field day at the school is pretty mellow. competition isn’t really stressed. i remember it being very stressful as a kid and this isn’t really like that. it is all about teamwork, being a good sport, and silliness.
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but our former place of employment used to have Annual Field Days along the FDR. It was basically color wars between randomly selected teams. I think only Middle Schoolers participated in Field Day. I’m not quite sure how the School Committee and/or the Society of Friends felt about those days…
Darryl- I am shocked and appalled at our former place of employment. OK, no, actually, nothing about that place could shock me now.
Isaiah – you are so sweet! It’s funny all the Quaker connections. And the vase ones.
Jen – we will have to keep an eye out for those accessories. I am perfectly aware that we may not make it back from Spain this summer without a few… purchases. Whether I am pregnant or not. In any case, Wes has a had time realizing that not all babies can be as brilliant and early-developing as the Gargantuan Man-Boy was, and it’s no use telling him any differently. He gets all frazzled and I start worrying that he won’t love it if it doesn’t sit up and start quoting Sartre by 8 weeks, so we will just have to wait and see.
And yes, kids should learn that all movement/exercise isn’t humiliating and painful. I guess.
Oh, you are so funny. Of course our baby won’t be quoting Sartre at 8 weeks. I don’t expect that to happen until it’s 4 months old. And it won’t be able to correctly identify the subtle differences between International Style and Bauhaus architecture until at least 5 months.