When I was in middle school, there was a hallway I would
have to enter before walking into the gymnasium. I was never really great at sports, but like
any average child within a public school system, I was subject to running
excruciating miles or hiking myself up on a balance beam, risking the scrutiny
of a long line of cheerleaders and bookworms behind me. Walking down that hallway into the gym felt
like a walk of shame, each step inched closer to something I hated doing. It was a room with terrible overhead lighting
and a high ceiling – high enough for my insecurities to dance and swirl around
me in a 50 minute time frame of agony.
I never could do a cartwheel. If I ever saw the gymnastic mats out and
assembled as I rounded that corner into the gym, I knew I was in for a long,
almost hour of a near death experience. One day in particular I saw the mats
and balance beams standing in the gym, like statues ready to applaud my
failures and assist in my personal abyss of insecurity. I reluctantly went into
the locker room and changed into my gym uniform. Like a prison uniform with a code number, it
read my last name in magic marker on either the left or right hand side of the
t-shirt. We lined up near the mat of
death and one by one, we all went hands first into performing the obligatory
cartwheel. The girl before went and I think
I may have blacked out from fear. I leaned
over to the gym teacher and whispered something about how I think I was going
to die. Die from fear of doing a
cartwheel.
Then something happened that I choose to never forget.
The gym teacher leaned into me and said something where only
I could hear it. She said, “Some of
these girls can’t sing a song like you can.
We all have our strengths, we all have what we are good at. I don’t care if your cartwheel is good. I just want you to try.”
And just like that, I realized that I had worth in that room
full of the smell of sweat and terrible overhead lighting. That teacher understood the value of not
crushing a child’s soul just because she wasn’t like the other girls. I will forever be indebted to that teacher,
for applauding me once I got to the end of the mat. The cartwheel was terrible, yet I got a
thumbs up.
To this day, I am still the choir geek. I am still the girl singing songs while other
girls are able to do really great cartwheels.
Because that teacher took ten seconds out of her life to put things into
perspective for a child that thought she might die, I am inspired to pay it
forward.
You have strength and value where others do not. Your part to play may not look like what the
person to your left or right has been given.
But play your part well. Be
confident in what gift you have been given.
And always…be willing to try some cartwheels here and there…that
sort of humiliation is sometimes just what we need to put it all into perspective.
