One time I joined the football team.
Okay, you got me. I tried. Did not succeed.
It was the end of 7th grade, and we were having our fall sports meetings for the next year. Since this was middle school, basically each coach just picked a spot in the gym and if you wanted to join that sport, you went and stood by them and they told you what would be involved.
I'd gone through this process a year ago, at the end of 6th grade. I picked cheerleading. I'm sorry, I like cheering for boys and I like skirts. Sue me. And some of my classmates would have liked to. I still remember I was standing at my yellow locker downstairs right after the sign-ups, and my friend Kelly called out to me.
"Hey, you're not seriously going to be a cheerleader, are you?" she asked, horrified.
"Yeah," I rolled my eyes at her. "Why not?"
"Because it's degrading to women! You're running around in a tiny skirt like a piece of meat for men! You are promoting the image of women that the women's movement has worked to erase for a hundred years!" she screeched. (Yes, we were only 12.)
"So?" I grinned. "I like skirts and I like boys and I like it when they stare at me like a piece of meat," (Says the 6th grader with the body of an 11th grader--no really, and that's a funny story too!).
Kelly took off in a huff. She didn't know how she would ever get through to me (she never did, I still like to do it and am planning to audition for a pro-sports dance team next month).
Well anyway, I did do cheerleading and discovered that middle school cheerleading wasn't quite the glamorous world I'd imagined it to be. Mostly because my squad captian hated my guts. (She scarred me for life-literally-she dropped me porposely in a sunt and gave me whiplash which plauged me for years). Also, our coach was a tiny bit phsycotic. She was supposed to be the coach the next year too, but she went insane about two weeks into the season and quit. After that the program fell apart.
So the next year I wanted to do something different. Actually, I had an entire sports plan written up for myself so I could play every single sport once. (However it's hard to play sports when you're on academic probation!) I'd been planning to play volleyball the fall of my 8th grade year since 6th grade. In fact, this was the plan of most of the girls in my class.
But not my then-best friend Olivia. She HAD to be different.
A little background: In sixth grade I had a group of 4-myself, my (still to this day) best friend Laura, Olivia, and Jenny. We were all in the same class. A lot of times (for partner work and such) it was me and Jenny, and Laura and Olivia. However after the first quarter, Jenny moved in with her mom which required her to change schools.
Know how they say "three's a crowd?" Oh hell yes. Especially with me and Olivia, two volitale, strong willed, opinionated personalities battling for one very meek, sweet girl. Laura would never hurt a fly. And Olivia and I were each determined that she was going to be MY best friend-not yours!!!! I laugh now when I think of the things we used to say and do to each other. And Laura would be stuck in the middle, begging us to just please get along-she could be best friends with both of us! But Olivia and I would not have it. It had to be our way or the highway. Every other week Olivia and I were officially NOT FRIENDS and then we were great friends the next week.
We made some other friends after sixth grade and none of us were in the same classes in seventh grade so that really helped our friendship stay intact. So Olivia and I were on good terms when we marched down to the gym that sunny May afternoon, with several other of our girl friends. (Laura didn't go, she never had an interest in playing sports, she was a musician, thru and thru.)
And as we're walking down to the gym, Olivia announces her big plan.
She's going to join the football team. And we're going with her.
Of course I objected immediately, I already had my 2 year sports plan set up and I was going to be cool and play volleyball. You would think given our history this would have caused a huge blow-out.
Actually, I was the first one whose mind Olivia changed. She knew just how to get to me. Boys. All she had to do was tell me that I could not only spend extra time after school with my crushes on the football team, BUT have an excuse to stare at them AND throw myself on top of them! (And possibly even go in their locker room).
That was all she had to say. I was ready to be suited up right then and there. A little boy crazy was I? Just a little... (Yeah right, I had a sixth sense for testosterone and went running towards it screaming like those Axe commericals any time it was detected.)
Our other friends weren't convinced so easily. I think Olivia gave them some kind of speech about women's rights (you are probably wondering what kind of liberal school I went to!) and progress and how if we were all equal then we should forage the way for other women to play any kind of sport regardless of sex... (At which point Lara went, "Sex? Did you say Sex? Where?? When??!!!)
She got them convinced enough to go to the meeting. So it was a parade of 3 hesitant girls, 1 very confident and stubbron girl and 1 very excited, rabid, boy-crazy nut case that seated themselves in the front row of the football meeting.
The boys, naturally, did not like this at all. They booed. The 3 wafflers waffled. Lara drooled. The football coach said, "what are you doing here? You can't join the football team!" To which Olivia snapped my jaw closed, marched up to the coach, and gave him a firey speech about how women had equal rights and if we wanted to play football then he damned well couldn't stop us. He shrugged and said okay.
The 200+ boys behind us booed louder and shouted insults. Lara fought the urge to dive into the middle of them. Our 3 wafflers nearly got up and ran to the volleyball meeting.
But we stayed for the whole meeting. And afterwards I grabbed volleyball permission slips for us all in addition to the football ones, in case our parents didn't go for this whole idea.
I was right. They didn't. My mother nearly chopped her hand off when I asked her if I could join the football team. So then I handed her the volleyball permission slip and asked if I could do that instead. She signed immediately. "Anything but football," she muttered. "My Lord what is wrong with you?"
I figure Olivia helped me out a lot, because if I would have just asked to play volleyball right off I would have had a long battle about my terrible grades and if I should play or not. But our other friends parents, for fear of their daughters being killed, had also said no.
Except for Olivia's. They said yes.
Now most girls would have said, if my friends aren't doing it with me, then I won't do it. Especially girls in middle school. But I think by now you know, Olivia is not most girls.
So while the rest of us marched onto the volleyball courts in the fall of 8th grade, Olivia suited up in the boys locker room (after the boys were gone of course) and played football with the boys.
How was it, you ask? Did she win a huge battle for women-kind everywhere?
Um...no. The coach rarely played her, and when he did, the boys refused to tackle her or give her the ball. Even the boys from the other middle schools. Wouldn't touch her with a ten foot pole. Personally I think this was because they were afraid she'd kick their ass.
And they were right-she would have. :)
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