older(s)
now
I feel:
Tweety's No 1 Fan!
avatar 6/4
32 flavors and then some...
// POP!
| 04/19/2004 - 5:30 p.m. |
2:50pm
(pre-Pat notes)
ahh, nervous, nervous as usual...
laughed it up again w/ Rosenberg yesterday.
i was in there forever.
remembered at the end to make her change my e.d. diagnosis.
(i am NOT ANOREXIC dammit!!!)
she was like, 'why do you care? its just for the stu-pid people'
b/c i do.
fine, so she goes to look up the dsm code.
i tell her its 307.50.
'how do you remember the stu-pid thing?'
are you kidding me--its like "name, rank, + diagnosis"
lol.
she also "made" me write a little list of things i need to do--
basically in terms of cleaning my damn room
(hey, it just occurred to me that i could call it a 'studio'; more impressive, ya know! heh)
+ fiiiinnally getting the rest of my shit in there.
and commit to when.
bah, i'm already behind.
she asked about s., who'd been there earlier + told her about moving.
i was just like, grrrr, don't even get me started.
i dunno, nothing else of note.
heehee, i put my tweety license thingy on the car earlier this afternoon.
awww, soooo cute 
was reading another old paper (short essay really).
cracking myself up dude.
"Patty Parks is NOT getting my title!"
lmao.
yes, i realize that makes absolutely no sense to anyone else.
hmmm, perhaps i'll paste the paper here?
yeah, why not.
a little taste of me several lifetimes ago.
(no less obnoxious however, as you'll see, just in a different way 
)
so, i wrote the first version of this at least 10 years ago in high school.
for an english class or something maybe?
don't really recall.
and the event it tells of occurred several years prior to that.
the next version i used for several college application essays.
got me into some decent schools! heh.
this particular version was for a "movement" class i took @ community college in 1998.
oh, and patty parks was this girl who'd been my (gymnastics) teammate since i started competing.
she was also a good friend at the time.
(lost touch long ago)
we had progressed through each competitive level at the same rate.
but she was always one of the top gymnasts in our conference, year after year.
and, not that she was a slacker or anything, but things always came pretty easy for her.
and being the competitive person i am, i couldn't help being a little resentful. 
but for the first time ever, i was kicking her ass consistently, and damn if it wasn't fun! 
ok, here's the essay...
�POP!�
It seemed to happen in slow motion. I was in the air, twisting and flipping; I spotted my landing; and then out of nowhere came that jarring sound as I hit the floor off-balance, with all of my weight coming down on a turned right ankle. As if it had been choreographed, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned their heads simultaneously to see what had caused that awful pop.
I was never an Olympic-caliber or even elite-level gymnast, but my passion for the sport of gymnastics was no less than that of such greats as Kim Zmeskal or Shannon Miller. I was in the midst of the best year of my athletic life. I was in the best shape I�d ever been, learning lots of new skills, and winning local competitions left and right. But the biggest meets of the season would start in only three weeks, and I had just been told it would be that long before I would be able to walk after tearing apart several ligaments in my ankle.
As I sat on my bed that night with my foot elevated and wrapped in a huge bag of ice, my ankle had already swelled to three times its normal size, displayed bruises of every color in the rainbow, and I couldn�t even wiggle my toes. I was making a futile attempt to convince myself that it was just a nightmare and I would wake up any second when the phone rang. It was my coach Lauretta, to whom I gave much of the credit for my new-found confidence and consistent performances. She called to lift my spirits and tell me not to worry. �Forget about sectionals,� she said about the first big competition on the way to National Championships. �By state champs, I promise you�ll be good as new.�
In that moment, I decided to throw all common sense out the window. �No!,� I told her. Since the end of the previous competitive season, I had three goals for this year: 1)win the all-around at sectionals; 2)place top three in the all-around and win the floor title at state championships; and 3)qualify to nationals. �I�m not giving up that easily. Screw my ankle! Patty Parks is NOT getting my title.� Lauretta laughed and told me she had had a feeling I�d say that. �You�re right. You can do this. I�ll see you tomorrow.�
I spent the next week in the gym, trying to walk in my air-cast, doing lots of conditioning and strength work, and repetition after repetition of my bar routine minus the dismount. Outside of practice I still used my crutches to get around, and kept the ankle elevated and on ice as much as possible. I was in pain, but I really didn�t care. I just wanted to do gymnastics. They gym had always been a safe place for me. When I was working-out, everything and everyone else in the world disappeared and I was completely content. I know of nothing else in the world that provides such an incredible rush as finally hitting that new skill you�ve been working on, nailing your tenth beam routine in a row, or doing the best vault of your life to help your team win a big meet.
By the second week after injuring my ankle, I was doing full beam routines and dance-throughs on floor. My parents and doctor all thought I was crazy, but knew better than to argue with me once I set my mind on doing something. Two days before sectionals, I finally went through competition routines on all four apparatus: dismounts, tumbling, everything. I felt pretty confident except for vault, my worst event under normal circumstances. But Lauretta assured me that with the adrenalin of performing, I would barely even feel the pain in my ankle. And she was right.
I ended up winning sectionals with a personal best score and in the next few months met my other goals for the year as well. But while the medals and trophies are now stored away somewhere, the memories of the three weeks I spent racing against time stay with me. I never again took my time in the gym or on the competition floor, doing what I loved, for granted. I also discovered a source of strength within myself that I had never before been connected with, one that has carried over into all other aspects of my life. Those are the things I remember, the stuff that really matters.