When I was in 9th grade, my parents, who were maybe getting divorced but kind of not really, but then again, maybe they were...sent me to a small (380 kids) Catholic high school. I had exactly two friends. One was a cool, smart, funny girl I had done ballet lessons with for years. She was nothing but friendly to me, but she had other friends, having gone to school with those guys for years. And we didn't have that many classes together. The other friend was another nice girl who was not at all my type and we probably would not have been friends except for the fact that we had both transferred in and didn't have any other friends and our lockers were close to each other. Also? It was ninth grade. Ninth grade is hard, no matter where you are socially. And then there was gym class.
Gym class at this Catholic school was "old school" gym. We had to do a billion jumping jacks and 25 push-ups every day, from the beginning. I was picked last for everything except basketball, because I was tall -- even though I promised the pickers that I was not very good at basketball (they got mad when they saw my "mad skills"). The teacher, of course, was a man with a pornstache who thought he was more appealing to teenage girls than he really was (or had any right to be). He was of the "Humiliate your pupils" school of thought. And he made us do dance routines. After all the popular and middling popular and not really popular kids had grouped up, I was left on a team with the nice girl I didn't have much in common with and two totally awkward guys from her old school*. And the gym teacher made us do our dance routine to FOOTLOOSE. And it was awful, truly awful, but we had to do it FOR A GRADE. There was never a room full of teenagers that was as wretchedly quiet as that gym, when the last note of "Footloose" played from our boombox.
SO! All of this sad, sad saga was merely to explain why this next video makes me almost drunk with happiness.
*PS: I do realize the irony of *me* calling my fellow students awkward...
PPS: By 11th grade, I finally convinced my parents to let me go to a large public school, where I found my tribe. And was good at Lifetime Sports.
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3 comments:
Awwww! You just made my day. SO made my day. And taught me a new fabulous word--pornstache! That is hilarious and I will be using it soon in a novel, just you wait and see...
Glad you found your tribe!!!!!
I was hoping that you had a video of your Footloose performance...
btw - what is Lifetime Sports?
Happily, no video. I might die from watching it.
Golf, tennis, jogging, badminton...the ones you might see in a geritol commercial.
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