Once upon a time, I chose my delusions over my dignity. At the tender age of 13, I was hellbent on playing sports, even though I was nowhere near athletic enough. I signed up for my middle school’s track and field tryouts (of all things), thinking that it was a great idea…
Hurdle-jumping was the activity, the doomed path, I chose for myself. Years earlier, in the fourth grade, I finished in second place for hurdle-jumping in the girls’ category. That old victory made it too easy to convince myself that this was going to be a piece of cake.
Let’s just say, I’ve never had a more humbling experience.
After long weeks of waiting, and no practicing, the day of the tryouts arrived. While I was waiting for my turn to jump the hurdles, I noticed that they were much higher than I remembered. Still, I had longer legs than most of the girls trying out.
“How hard could it be?” I thought.
When it was finally my turn to jump the hurdles, I started to get nervous. And the fact that my crush was there to watch did not help. Like any thirteen-year-old, I felt the strong urge to impress him. I wanted to be the Usain Bolt of hurdle-jumping.
One of the coaches—a glorified teacher, really, yelled, “GO!” My competitor and I started to run.
At first, I was jumping over the hurdles awkwardly. I couldn’t get the timing quite right, so I did the next best thing: I jumped at random points. Sometimes I jumped early, other times I jumped late. As I moved through a line of hurdles, I decided to take a risk and jump a little too late. I took a leap of faith.
Literally.
My leap was cut short when I went crashing down with a hurdle, but the embarrassment didn’t stop there. I would’ve been better off had I faked an injury and quit right there. Instead, I got back on my feet and continued running, only to knock down the hurdles ahead of me.
Every. Last. One.
Once I was done with my embarrassing display, I went to the coaches to check my time. One of them, who also happened to be my phys ed teacher, said he was hardly paying attention to my time with all of the “hurdles flying” behind me.
I took the bus home that day, as I did every day. I had a conversation with the bus driver and mentioned that I was coming home from a track tryout. He was a nice old man, and told me that someday, I could represent the country. He probably meant in a parody version of the Olympics.
When I took that leap of faith, I should’ve anticipated diving into total shame. What can I say? That tryout was one of many embarrassing moments in my life, and I like to convince myself that no one remembers. That makes it easier to fall asleep at night.