The choir geek and the cartwheel of death

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.