Two years later and I still have nightmares about MVC (Minnesota Vikings Cheerleaders) tryouts. Two years! I will probably have them all my life. Ideally, after I'm done having kids I would like to try out again (if I can get my body back) so I'm sure they'll keep coming. And man, will that be scary, being 30-something and having had kids, surrounded by a bunch of 21 year olds with perfect bodies. But the oldest NFL cheerleader is 41, so if she can do it, I can at least try out.
Mostly the nightmare centers around me needing a new costume days before tryouts (when it's pretty much impossible), or forgetting parts of my costume, or forgetting choreography and getting yelled at and told I suck (which does not happen at tryouts).
The nightmare got me thinking about the pre-tryout meltdown, which usually happens in the week before actual tryouts. Any time I've ever had tryouts for a professional team, this happens. Any other girl I've talked to at tryouts will admit she had one too. Someone sets you off (usually a family member or your spouse or boyfriend) and you start crying hysterically and everything in your life seems impossible.
There are a couple reasons for this. One, you're on a strict diet. Which means no comfort food and when you're already stressed, steamed broccoli does not make you feel better like a fudge brownie would. Two, you're in the gym almost every day so you're exhausted and now you're worried that you only have a few days left and your body isn't exactly perfectly right. You've been doing hair and makeup and nails and photo shoots and tanning and dancing (all this costs a ton of money too) and trying to get everything exactly perfectly right for months now, and it's finally occurred to you that in two days (or whenever) everything is going to end.
It only takes a few hours for someone to squash the four/five months of hard work you did. A huge chunk of girls don't make it past the first day. You'll probably be one of them, even though you did everything you could. You might as well have skipped the whole thing and spent the last five months watching t.v., eating Cheetos and drinking beer.
Once you get past the meltdown, you feel better, and you realize it doesn't matter, you did everything you could do and it's up to them now (and you not to screw up). Once they announce the first cuts and you have to go home, you're almost relieved--at least now you know. These past few months have been really stressful and you wonder if you'd be crazy to put yourself through a whole year of this while on the team.
Then you get home and you're sad because your dream didn't come true and you'll have to wait a whole year before you can try again.
But hey, at least you have a super banging bikini body for the summer :)
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