The One With The Death-Defying Feat In Gym Class
Hmm. ANYWAYS!
The most amazing thing happened today, in my opinion. So, stick with me, I promise this is a great story, and, while it might have to be one of those things that you needed to be there to understand, or that would have been more suited as a movie than a story, I will try to do it justice. And possibly use thesaurus.com where necessary.
So. Today during gym, I decided to play a little soccer with my freshmen girls. I was the goalie, because, well let's just say that soccer is not my forte and my kicking coordination is sub-par at best. Anyways, I got the ball, and punted it. We were on the north shelf, which you may recall has those high black nets that can be lowered for batting cages, etc., and unfortunately I managed to get the ball stuck in one. So, one of the girls, Rachel, decides to do her best to assist the situation. (Some background info on Rachel: She likes to be called Rain, she listens to Japanese techno, and practices ice-skating maneuvers in the main gym after circuit.) She's eccentric, and full of surprises, to say the least. She proceeds to take off her shoes, and start throwing them at the ball to try to bounce it far enough so it will fall out of the nets on to the ground. Well, me being gym leader of the year, I decided to take her other shoe and give her a hand. Let me tell you - shoes do not necessarily fly aerodynamically efficiently. My aim was off, and I landed the shoe on the high ledge above the side basketball net backboard, a good 16 feet or so off the ground. So, at this point we had a ball stuck in the net, and a shoe stuck on the ledge. Plus - we so happen to have an oblivious male subsitute teacher today, who really seemed awkward and nervous and didn't really have everything under control. So, as he comes upstairs to check on the soccer game, Rachel "Rain" has already decided to take matters into her own hands. For those of you who do not know her, she's about 5'3", 90 lbs, give or take. Within seconds, she jumps up and grabs onto the basketball net. From there she reaches up and is hanging on the rim. I was a little nervous, because I thought she was going to fall, or something. But, that was the least of my concerns after her next move. She tucks herself and pulls herself through the hoop. Yes, the basketball hoop. Now, from here, she stands on the top of the rim. You know, that little orange rectangle part that occasionally gets a basketball stuck and everyone laughs, etc. She had no shoes on, too, remember. So now I'm a little more than freaked out. If she fell she would break a leg, at least. But this was all happening really fast. Now she grabs the top of the backboard, and uses it as leverage to grab her shoe from the ledge and calmly toss it down. She then elegantly flips off the rim and lands like it was nothing. Well, the flip might have been an exaggeration, but the point is that she did it with such coordination you'd think that she was an Olympic gold medalist basketball net climber. Definitely the most impressive thing I have seen firsthand thus far in my high school career, and maybe life. Trust me, if you were there you would have been equally impressed. I asked her afterwards how she did that, because there is no way I could have possibly pulled that off. She said, "Years of rock-climbing experience at Galyans, you know, the place that is now Dick's." Wow.
Other than that, today was kind of a big waste of time. During English we sat around and read Gatsby and made some notecards for my field trip later. Leadership, same deal, we just went down to the cafeteria and bought some food since I forgot my lunch to bring to VL.
Wait. Physics was ASININE (which by the way, I did not know was spelled like that, but I looked it up just to be sure haha). So, he began "teaching" about magnets, or something, and he used the human hand as an analogy, but really it was the most ludicrous lesson I have ever been a part of in my life. It REALLY had absolutely nothing to do with anything, and I'm not here to judge, but, I'm PRETTY sure that in real life, people don't learn about magnetism anyway that resembled the method he attempted demonstrating. Ah, that class makes me sick.
The field trip was good I suppose. The kids enjoyed the activities much more than I thought they were going to. Bad flashbacks to 15 minute grade school lunch periods. And, gym, well I already told you that story - and Spanish was fine because we were in the media center, meaning that speaking in Spanish was not mandatory and Kathryn and I had some good conversations.
I am looking forward to next week, because, for some reason I have a gut feeling that it is going to go by pretty fast. Late start Tuesday, which I still can't make up my mind about my feelings for late starts, but that's relatively unimportant. I just can't wait til Spring Break and I hope we actually have good weather because spring is a time for frisbee, rollerblading, running, and getting to feel active again, which I have been yearning for. AND! MR. PIRATE WEDNESDAY! That is definitely my favorite annual event. So, I hope that you all are looking forward to the weeks to come as much as I am.
Hmm. Brandon just informed me that some people do use the hand analogy in real life and I found some examples for it on the internet. But either way, he takes it too far. And I don't really understand it anyway. Oh well.
P.S.
I am excited for tomorrow's hallway music. :-)