No but they should have.
....I avoided doing cartwheels (and all gymnastics) in high school by telling my PE teacher that I had inner-ear problems.
She also let me and three friends "jog" during PE period while everyone else played volleyball or flag football. This involved "jogging" until we were out of sight of the school and then lounging on my deck drinking sun tea.
I thought I was so smart. Smart would have been knowing why exactly I wrote a note to the short-haired, leather-jacketed teaching assistant asking her to keep touch. Not a clue.
Wow, you nailed my middle and high school gym experience, except i didn't get to go to McDonalds. And i don't think they were bonding with me, i always thought those closet bitches were trying to punish the baby-dykes who weren't the bleeding-rugby type because they were hot for us and they had to push us away. It worked. But clearly, I'm not bitter. (Right, that's you!)
Her name was Johnston. I was just thinking about her the other day. She pulled me aside one day in 4th or 5th grade, and told me it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. And, if I would just turn up the corners of my mouth and make the effort the smile would catch up. She always gave me a hard time and a number of resoundingly firm claps on the shoulder. Currently, she gives golf lessons for a local pro-shop and looks the *exact* same as she did when I was 10, orange tan and all. She still tries to get me to smile and claps me on the shoulder so hard it hurts. She got me long before I did. It's still an unspoken thing between us, but now I get it.
Maggie,
Great story.
I think there is a kind of butching ritual among lesbians. It involves giving a hard time to the new girl, the pretty girl, the independent girl, etc. The women who do this remind me of boys in a Tom Sawyer story -- acting tougher than tough and puffing & strutting, while making fun of the newcomer or outsider.
I noticed this actually not in gym class but the other day when I stopped by the local gay & lesbian center. I'd been donating money to the place for years but never found their events compelling for me personally. I mean, what do I need "Lesbain Rap" for, except to cruise for chicks? And I'm married now, so no more of that, for better or worse, I guess.
Anyway, I walked into the room just prior to Lesbian Rap. I was in my work clothes, looking kind of fem, I guess. Not something I really think about. A leather-jacketed youngster took it upon herself to grill me -- why was I there, why was I so obviously closeted, etc., etc. Hilarious. I told her that she had just reminded me of why I wasn't attending.
But in retrospect, I wondered why there are such self-appointed gate-keepers to the lesbian world, and why they affect the manners and approach of overwrought teenage boys. Maybe somebody has some insight into this?
First paragraph, sort of like mine too. I actually thought I was the only weird one on the planet to feel that way. "Hush, no one else needs to know. Just keep it in your head jj...". Weird, harmless, and interesting. But I was clueless that I did look like one. No wonder I was socially "rejected". They knew something I didn't know! Damn. Now I get it when one of them said, "We think you will never attract guys." I thought she meant I was too ugly. Now that's a compliment.
It's because not so long ago you couldn't be gay. You couldn't be out. It's still not completely OK. Women weren't allowed to function outside of well defined social roles without serious consequences. We had to (have to) struggle so hard to get out of assigned gender roles and develop our own identities. Over time that struggle became so much a part of us as we explored all the things we were previously not allowed to be. No matter how you identify as a lesbian, especially if you are young, there is a lot of self-defense and need for personal identity. It finally occured to me as much courage as it took to step outside traditional feminine roles and be more masculine and unwomanlike; it takes just as much courage to be feminine and want traditional things as a lesbian. Hell, it takes courage to be any kind of gay regardless of your sex or how you dress/act/identify. The same way she was judging you, you were judging her. That's why young leather jacket put you to the barbs and why gym teachers everywhere encourage us to stop cying into our panties. It isn't the easiest thing in the whole world to be yourself and some people have had to fight for their identities.
I'm feeling a little arrogant today. Do you think midol works for that?
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