Who doesn't love a cheerleader? I certainly did, for a while. In 8th grade, I broke my father's heart by announcing that I did not want to play basketball any more. I wanted to be a cheerleader.
There are several theories that I have toyed with over the years about why I wanted to cheer on other people who were playing sports, when I was an avid athlete myself (at least at the time-playing both volleyball and softball). It came down to two things: 1) I got into all the basketball games for free. 2) I loved wearing the short skirt.
Yup. That's it. I wasn't a particularly good cheerleader, but I also filled out another role for the squad: the fat cheerleader. Okay, I look at the picture above and realize that I'm not really that fat. Not the skinniest for sure, but no where near where I would top out at. But at the time, my perspective was very skewed and I thought that I was by far the fattest chick at my high school. But mostly it was the big boobs that threw things off.
That was both figuratively and literally. I wasn't able to tumble as I had before because the girls got in the way or threw off my balance. And this was the era of rapid growth for my chesticles. Also, they aren't lying when they call them "little sweaters" for cheerleaders. My mom and I had to stretch my middle school cheerleading sweater over the back of one of our large kitchen chairs, wet it and stuff it with newspaper for three days for it to be stretched enough to not choke me. Seriously. That happened.
But in the end, I decided that two years of cheering was enough for me. It was fun while it lasted, but I was someone who actually liked watching basketball games instead of facing the crowd.
No comments:
Post a Comment