My daughter-in-law gave me a wonderful Christmas gift. A subscription to StoryWorth prompts me each Monday to answer a random question. My responses are then compiled into a book and given to both my daughter-in-law and me at the end of the year. It’s a fun way to encapsulate ideas and memories without the fear of boring anyone … which is a very often result of such musings. You know that eyes-glazing-over thing?
This week the question was:
“What sports did you play in high school?”
Well, that took me a bit off the beaten path to answer. Being of the female persuasion, there weren’t many sports to play in high school in the 1950s and, having spent most of my childhood in a parochial school where there were no actual sports, the answer was problematic. But, being also of what the nuns called me, “vaccinated with a phonograph needle,” I forged ahead.
In Brooklyn girls played games with a pink ball that included a version of hopscotch called “Potsie” and a variety of schoolyard games that involved bouncing the same pink ball and moving one of your legs over it when you came to words starting with a particular letter. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d put my skill at 4.5. There was also jumprope, at which I was a total failure. Once, being a small-time iconoclast, I tried to play stickball in the street with the boys. I was quickly yanked into the house by my aunts, who were scandalized by my behavior. I did watch a lot of the Brooklyn Dodgers games on the TV that we got when I was 9. I still know Roy Campanella’s batting average. I don’t’ know if that counts.
This was the setting for the background in sports that I brought to high school in Carmel, N.Y.
You can just imagine how awful I was when it came to playing softball in gym class. There aren’t words to describe my inability to hit the ball with the bat, let alone catch a ball if I was playing one of the bases. I had to beg my brother to teach me how to hit the ball. I practiced for hours with him and by myself so that I could at least not be the last picked for a game. I never did figure out how to catch a ball. Once, while covering third base, I caught a ball without a glove. I broke two fingers.
We also played field hockey in gym class which was, beside basketball, the only girls’ sport that took our team outdoors to play on other fields with other teams. I tried out for the high school field hockey team and was allowed to play, not to start, mind you, but at least to sit on the bench. There had to be a really good reason to put me on the field. I can easily recall the coach’s face when that happened. I felt sorry for her.
There is this part of competitive sports that you don’t usually think about – the bus rides to and from games where we all sang songs about each other’s current love interests. I excelled at the singing part.
There was also a kind of pride in knowing that none of the boys would play field hockey because they said it was too dangerous.
Girls basketball was … how can you describe this? A game that is played on two half-courts. If you were a guard, you stayed on your side of the court. Forwards stayed on the other, mostly. Most boring game as far as I was concerned. My lack of talent was also a factor.
In our small high school, boys’ sports gathered the entire community together. Friday nights it was basketball and, on Saturdays in the fall, it was football. I was a cheerleader for a very short time during one basketball season because Judy Codrington was in an automobile accident and they needed someone to fill in. I wasn’t good, but I did know all of the cheers, even if the bigger jumps were beyond me. At football games I played in our very rag tag band and, for a time, acted as the majorette. Our band uniforms didn’t fit anyone, and I made my majorette outfit. Making that outfit was a challenge. There was only one place in town where you could buy patterns and fabric. You made do with what they had. They had one, long sleeved, short-skirted pattern and some pale yellow narrow whale corduroy fabric and red or black lining material. My Dad bought me a pair of white boots with gold tassels to wear with my yellow narrow whale corduroy, long sleeved short skirt lined-with-red uniform.
I find myself smiling.
Despite my less-than-mediocre performances in any of these activities, there was something else – a camaraderie, friendships, shared experiences that have remained with me for more than 60 years.
I guess that has its own level of honors, a value without trophies.
