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conuly
Clicky
A couple of months ago, my two oldest kids came home from school abuzz over the new game they'd learned in gym class. I'd never heard them express any kind of excitement about P.E. before -- they are not natural athletes -- but there they were strategizing and recounting the high points of their respective matches with unprecedented zeal. I tried to follow the discussion, but it was making little sense to me. My one foray into organized sports was a single spring on the Brookwell Cleaners Softball Team in 6th grade. I remember very little about the season other than the ache in my shoulder from holding my hand above my head in a futile attempt to distract the gnats from my face, the sound of my own teammates' jeers as I made my regular strikeout, and the euphoria of being allowed to take the bench whenever our team had the slightest chance of winning.
The game my kids were so agog over wasn't softball, though. It wasn't even foursquare, a game they'd once tried to explain to me without much success. Finally, I asked them what they were talking about.
"Dodgeball!" my 7-year-old son announced, gleefully. "It's really fun."
Dodgeball? My children were playing dodgeball? That cruel, brutal, violent schoolyard game so mercilessly satirized in the 2004 film with Ben Stiller? The game, more important, that exemplified everything that was wrong with my childhood in suburban New Jersey, a short, pasty-faced Jewish girl in a town full of scrubbed, blond, athletic WASPs, their long tanned limbs toned from years of tennis lessons and country club swim teams? Dodgeball? Over my dead body.
I know it's fashionable to claim to have been a nerd as a child, to insist on having scrabbled to hold on to the lowest tier of the social ladder, to recount years of torture at the hands of the golden and anointed. Trust me, I know just how trite my history of exclusion is. I know that when compared to a lifetime of true deprivation and abuse, suburban misery counts for little. Nonetheless, as someone who still, at 40, gets a clutch of nausea every time she drives by George Washington Junior High School, I am just not willing to let go of the reins of this particular hobbyhorse. I am convinced that my entire personality was formed in those long tile hallways where I was a victim of that most banal of childhood torments -- ostracism. Everything can be explained by, every torque and twist in my character can be attributed to, those grim, lonely years. Neither the jocks, nor the heads, not even the brains wanted any part of me. The other kids didn't talk to me, or even look at me, and if it weren't for the series of successively more hostile prank phone calls that I received, I could have happily deluded myself into thinking that none of them knew I existed.
Gym class, however, was where they allowed themselves to express their disdain. In gym class for some reason they were allowed to heap derision on the apraxic kids. ("No batter, no batter. Easy out.") Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and values. Everything fell apart as soon as we put on those maroon polyester gym suits.
And dodgeball. God, dodgeball. As my own children were planning their tactics, evaluating which kids would be easily taken out by a hail of red balls (considerations included general athletic ability, low vs. high center of gravity, established cowardice in the face of hard throws) I was rocketed back to those dreaded days on the blacktop at G.W. Jr. High. I remember quaking under the gaze of a huge, blond girl who even then I knew was destined to remember eighth grade as the apogee of her life. She smiles, heaves back her strong arm, and wails the ball. Before it even begins its arc through the air I'm on the ground, quivering, arms over my head, already crying even though I haven't been hit yet.
"I'm calling your gym teacher," I announced.
My children stared at me, mouths agape.
"What are you talking about?" my 10-year-old daughter said.
"You can't play dodgeball. It's cruel."
"It is not," wailed my son.
"Yes it is," I said. "It's mean! It's mean to pick on a kid because she's weak, because she can't catch a ball, or duck, or run fast enough."
The children looked at each other and then at me. Clearly, the more barbaric aspects of the game had not even penetrated their consciousness.
"Mom," my daughter said. "Please, Mom. Do not call our gym teacher. Please."
But it was too late. I was already marshaling my facts. The National Association for Sport & Physical Education has issued a position paper on dodgeball, and they don't like it any more than I do. Dodgeball is not an appropriate activity for K-12 school physical education programs, says the NASPE. A game that targets and eliminates weaker kids does not help them develop confidence. While it may allow for the practice of some physical skills, there are many other activities that do this better, without using human targets. Furthermore, the only children who like dodgeball are the children who don't get hit, who don't get eliminated, who don't get wailed on. Like, for some reason, my children.
I prepared for my conversation with my children's gym teacher by learning by heart the following statement from the NASPE. "It is not appropriate to teach our children that you win by hurting others." Then I made the call. My children go to a remarkable school where community service is an actual part of the curriculum. It made no sense for dodgeball to exist there. This is a school where conflict resolution is taken so seriously that when some neighborhood toughs threw eggs at the fourth graders, the head of the lower school brought them in for a mediated encounter session. This is a school that takes very seriously the theories of Vivian Gussin Paley, author of the marvelous book on childhood social ostracism "You Can't Say You Can't Play." I chose this school precisely because it is the polar opposite of G.W. Jr. High. The gym teacher and the head of the lower school called me back, not a little confused, especially when I explained that, while my children were enjoying themselves tremendously playing dodgeball, and that I didn't actually know of any kids who weren't, I still thought they should ban the game.
It was only while I was earnestly describing to the head of the lower school how detrimental dodgeball was to our children's developing bodies and minds, through the prism, I might add, of my experience huddling with my hands over my 11-year-old head while dozens of balls rained down on me, that I realized that what I was really trying to do was exorcise the ghosts of my own unhappy childhood. I was stirring up trouble at my children's school because 25 years ago I was miserable, and I had decided dodgeball was the very matrix of that misery, in which all the lines of force that were conspiring to crush my spirit were laid bare.
The thing is, my fantasies about being a parent always involved fighting for my unpopular child, doing for her what my own parents couldn't do for me when I was a girl. I am so ready to be that little girl's mother. I know just how to provide the proper sympathy, exactly what to say when the boys call out, "Hey, carpenter's dream!" (flat as a board, and easy to screw), or when you find a page in a slam book dedicated to you. My mother, as supportive and loving as she is, was always left somewhat befuddled and at a loss by my sufferings. "But I always had so many friends when I was a girl!" she used to say. Now that it's my turn to be the mom, maybe I overcompensate. I regale my children with tales of how I used to eat my lunch huddled over a book in a corner of the school library because no one would let me sit at their lunch table. I comfort them with stories about geeks and nerds who went on to conquer the world.
There's only one problem. My children are nothing like me, and they can never quite figure out why I'm laying it on so thick. They aren't living out my childhood, they're living their own. Whatever problems they might have, and they've got plenty, they're not the same ones I had. Sure, they feel sorry for me, or the me that I once was, but they don't really get it. My oldest daughter is supremely confident, secure in her position in her class and with her friends. She's always been popular. She was the queen bee of Gymboree. My son doesn't have her social ease, but neither does he have quite my awkwardness.
And he loves dodgeball.
Halfway through the dodgeball wars, I dropped the ball. On purpose. Whatever I think of the pedagogical value of the game, the fact is my children are happy. They like school, they like gym class. What they don't like is their mother working out her adolescent traumas by berating their gym teacher.
There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature. It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction. They'll look at you, stricken, and beg you not to harangue the coach, not to harass the mother of the boy who didn't invite them to the birthday party, not to intervene to rescind the lousy trade of Yu-Gi-Oh cards they made. You want to protect them, but sometimes what you have to protect them from is the ongoing avalanche of your own childhood -- crashing down on you like a hail of dodgeballs.
Edit: Everyone calm down. I know, you're upset, and you have your reasons and good arguments. But it's frankly a bit scary at how quickly the discussion is escalating along.
A couple of months ago, my two oldest kids came home from school abuzz over the new game they'd learned in gym class. I'd never heard them express any kind of excitement about P.E. before -- they are not natural athletes -- but there they were strategizing and recounting the high points of their respective matches with unprecedented zeal. I tried to follow the discussion, but it was making little sense to me. My one foray into organized sports was a single spring on the Brookwell Cleaners Softball Team in 6th grade. I remember very little about the season other than the ache in my shoulder from holding my hand above my head in a futile attempt to distract the gnats from my face, the sound of my own teammates' jeers as I made my regular strikeout, and the euphoria of being allowed to take the bench whenever our team had the slightest chance of winning.
The game my kids were so agog over wasn't softball, though. It wasn't even foursquare, a game they'd once tried to explain to me without much success. Finally, I asked them what they were talking about.
"Dodgeball!" my 7-year-old son announced, gleefully. "It's really fun."
Dodgeball? My children were playing dodgeball? That cruel, brutal, violent schoolyard game so mercilessly satirized in the 2004 film with Ben Stiller? The game, more important, that exemplified everything that was wrong with my childhood in suburban New Jersey, a short, pasty-faced Jewish girl in a town full of scrubbed, blond, athletic WASPs, their long tanned limbs toned from years of tennis lessons and country club swim teams? Dodgeball? Over my dead body.
I know it's fashionable to claim to have been a nerd as a child, to insist on having scrabbled to hold on to the lowest tier of the social ladder, to recount years of torture at the hands of the golden and anointed. Trust me, I know just how trite my history of exclusion is. I know that when compared to a lifetime of true deprivation and abuse, suburban misery counts for little. Nonetheless, as someone who still, at 40, gets a clutch of nausea every time she drives by George Washington Junior High School, I am just not willing to let go of the reins of this particular hobbyhorse. I am convinced that my entire personality was formed in those long tile hallways where I was a victim of that most banal of childhood torments -- ostracism. Everything can be explained by, every torque and twist in my character can be attributed to, those grim, lonely years. Neither the jocks, nor the heads, not even the brains wanted any part of me. The other kids didn't talk to me, or even look at me, and if it weren't for the series of successively more hostile prank phone calls that I received, I could have happily deluded myself into thinking that none of them knew I existed.
Gym class, however, was where they allowed themselves to express their disdain. In gym class for some reason they were allowed to heap derision on the apraxic kids. ("No batter, no batter. Easy out.") Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and values. Everything fell apart as soon as we put on those maroon polyester gym suits.
And dodgeball. God, dodgeball. As my own children were planning their tactics, evaluating which kids would be easily taken out by a hail of red balls (considerations included general athletic ability, low vs. high center of gravity, established cowardice in the face of hard throws) I was rocketed back to those dreaded days on the blacktop at G.W. Jr. High. I remember quaking under the gaze of a huge, blond girl who even then I knew was destined to remember eighth grade as the apogee of her life. She smiles, heaves back her strong arm, and wails the ball. Before it even begins its arc through the air I'm on the ground, quivering, arms over my head, already crying even though I haven't been hit yet.
"I'm calling your gym teacher," I announced.
My children stared at me, mouths agape.
"What are you talking about?" my 10-year-old daughter said.
"You can't play dodgeball. It's cruel."
"It is not," wailed my son.
"Yes it is," I said. "It's mean! It's mean to pick on a kid because she's weak, because she can't catch a ball, or duck, or run fast enough."
The children looked at each other and then at me. Clearly, the more barbaric aspects of the game had not even penetrated their consciousness.
"Mom," my daughter said. "Please, Mom. Do not call our gym teacher. Please."
But it was too late. I was already marshaling my facts. The National Association for Sport & Physical Education has issued a position paper on dodgeball, and they don't like it any more than I do. Dodgeball is not an appropriate activity for K-12 school physical education programs, says the NASPE. A game that targets and eliminates weaker kids does not help them develop confidence. While it may allow for the practice of some physical skills, there are many other activities that do this better, without using human targets. Furthermore, the only children who like dodgeball are the children who don't get hit, who don't get eliminated, who don't get wailed on. Like, for some reason, my children.
I prepared for my conversation with my children's gym teacher by learning by heart the following statement from the NASPE. "It is not appropriate to teach our children that you win by hurting others." Then I made the call. My children go to a remarkable school where community service is an actual part of the curriculum. It made no sense for dodgeball to exist there. This is a school where conflict resolution is taken so seriously that when some neighborhood toughs threw eggs at the fourth graders, the head of the lower school brought them in for a mediated encounter session. This is a school that takes very seriously the theories of Vivian Gussin Paley, author of the marvelous book on childhood social ostracism "You Can't Say You Can't Play." I chose this school precisely because it is the polar opposite of G.W. Jr. High. The gym teacher and the head of the lower school called me back, not a little confused, especially when I explained that, while my children were enjoying themselves tremendously playing dodgeball, and that I didn't actually know of any kids who weren't, I still thought they should ban the game.
It was only while I was earnestly describing to the head of the lower school how detrimental dodgeball was to our children's developing bodies and minds, through the prism, I might add, of my experience huddling with my hands over my 11-year-old head while dozens of balls rained down on me, that I realized that what I was really trying to do was exorcise the ghosts of my own unhappy childhood. I was stirring up trouble at my children's school because 25 years ago I was miserable, and I had decided dodgeball was the very matrix of that misery, in which all the lines of force that were conspiring to crush my spirit were laid bare.
The thing is, my fantasies about being a parent always involved fighting for my unpopular child, doing for her what my own parents couldn't do for me when I was a girl. I am so ready to be that little girl's mother. I know just how to provide the proper sympathy, exactly what to say when the boys call out, "Hey, carpenter's dream!" (flat as a board, and easy to screw), or when you find a page in a slam book dedicated to you. My mother, as supportive and loving as she is, was always left somewhat befuddled and at a loss by my sufferings. "But I always had so many friends when I was a girl!" she used to say. Now that it's my turn to be the mom, maybe I overcompensate. I regale my children with tales of how I used to eat my lunch huddled over a book in a corner of the school library because no one would let me sit at their lunch table. I comfort them with stories about geeks and nerds who went on to conquer the world.
There's only one problem. My children are nothing like me, and they can never quite figure out why I'm laying it on so thick. They aren't living out my childhood, they're living their own. Whatever problems they might have, and they've got plenty, they're not the same ones I had. Sure, they feel sorry for me, or the me that I once was, but they don't really get it. My oldest daughter is supremely confident, secure in her position in her class and with her friends. She's always been popular. She was the queen bee of Gymboree. My son doesn't have her social ease, but neither does he have quite my awkwardness.
And he loves dodgeball.
Halfway through the dodgeball wars, I dropped the ball. On purpose. Whatever I think of the pedagogical value of the game, the fact is my children are happy. They like school, they like gym class. What they don't like is their mother working out her adolescent traumas by berating their gym teacher.
There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature. It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction. They'll look at you, stricken, and beg you not to harangue the coach, not to harass the mother of the boy who didn't invite them to the birthday party, not to intervene to rescind the lousy trade of Yu-Gi-Oh cards they made. You want to protect them, but sometimes what you have to protect them from is the ongoing avalanche of your own childhood -- crashing down on you like a hail of dodgeballs.
Edit: Everyone calm down. I know, you're upset, and you have your reasons and good arguments. But it's frankly a bit scary at how quickly the discussion is escalating along.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 04:20 pm (UTC)I'm with you with the glasses thing - I was 9 when it finally became impossible for me to do PE without my glasses on. But again, our dodgeball was knees and below, and played with sponge balls. You would really, really struggle to hurt anyone playing it, particularly since 7-11 year olds aren't notorious for their rippling biceps.
Last year in a theatre performance I had someone thrown at my face (literally.) In the actual examined performance they hit me so hard that a) I was worried I'd broken (or bloodied at least) my nose and b) my glasses cut my face and the left arm bent by three inches! Stupid tutors wouldn't let me take the 20 minutes to dash back to my flat to grab my sunglasses so I had to sit there answering questions unable to see and developing quite the headache.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 04:40 pm (UTC)While, as I said, this wasn't horribly traumatizing, it was one of the things that led to my insistence that people never throw things at me, and my instinct when something is thrown at me to cover my face, and generally not to even bother attempting to catch it. Of course, now that I'm legally blind and don't have depth perception, it matters a whole lot less. But basically, dodgeball isn't educational, and it isn't exercise for a lot of the kids - so it's kind of pointless and potentially harmful. So, I'm fairly opposed. But I do think gym is important and should be retained, but preferably retooled to be more educational and useful. I would love it if it taught martial arts for a unit. This would still allow for problems for some people, but it would teach kids how to fall properly and give them all a chance at some self defense. Yes, the bullies would abuse it, but they already have a physical advantage. And at least martial arts are useful.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 04:50 pm (UTC)Funnily enough, a few years later I had my first try at badminton and was absolutely dreadful (I'm now a member of my university society and still pretty bad ;0) The reason? I couldn't see the shuttle in the air. For some years I always tried to play with a coloured shuttle because I had slightly more chance of being able to see it.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 04:55 pm (UTC)And, of course, now I'm blind (20/400 vision in the better eye right now, uncorrectable until surgery and then who knows what it'll be) and people still hold things up from many feet away to show them to me, while I stare at them in confusion and amusement. And thus, I believe the universe has a sense of humor.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 05:29 pm (UTC)The universe does have a sense of humour indeed. The other morning (afternoon actually *cough*) my housemate woke me by knocking on my door, asking for money for the electricity (we'd run out during the night.) I fumbled around without my glasses on trying to find my (brightly coloured) wallet. I eventually gave up (couldn't feel it in any of my bags) and put my glasses on. It was on the end of my desk, right in front of my housemate. Who had watched me feeling around. Grr.
And last year, in the performance after the glasses-breaking one, my director decided I should do the play without my glasses. Genius idea! My range of clear vision is about 4 inches in front of my face. I told him this. Repeatedly. And he *still* kept getting at me because I wasn't taking visual cues.
- the lighting was low
- my head was bowed, and I had a large hood
- the sides of the stage were blackout curtains
- the costumes were long grey robes
- between me and the other actors were walls constructed of many layers of clingfilm
I could not see a thing! I told him many times that I could not see a thing. And I still got told off for not taking visual cues. Gnargh!
I wanted to stick my glasses on his face and tell him to try functioning like that for 5 minutes.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 05:36 pm (UTC)Them: Four eyes!
Me: Four eyes are better than two.
Them: (flailing to keep up the insult) But two of yours don't work!
Me: Uh, which two?
Them: (silence, because there's no clear answer on that)
Me: (walking away and continuing on with my life)
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 05:43 pm (UTC)Heh, I just remembered the eyetests they used to give us at school. I had to wear my glasses for them and was always confused by that. I didn't understand how they were going to test my eyes with my glasses on. Looking back, I suppose they were checking that everyone's glasses status (having/not having them) was appropriate for them to read the board and so on. And checking for colourblindness in boys.
Heh, that's great (your response.) Considering how much I was bullied/ostracised/picked on as a kid, I have no memory of being called four-eyes until I was 13. That year my school had implemented compulsory uniform and suddenly the insults became more personal and for the first time I heard "four-eyes" - amazing huh. I wish I'd been brave/witty enough to respond "two-braincells" to them.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 05:51 pm (UTC)I was always told that they didn't like to give glasses to young children, because it could affect how their eyes develop. That some problems in kids will sort themselves out if you don't give them assistance, but that in my case the problems warranted correction. It also had to be reasonably uncommon because until I got older, my eye glass frame options were really limited, and I usually had frames a bit too large for me, which didn't help with making glasses nice.
But I really didn't care, because I liked being able to see. Also, I knew they weren't picking on me because I wore glasses. They were picking on me because they liked to pick on me, and they would vary why. But all the things they said were just the excuses found, the thing to tease me about at that moment. When really, they just didn't like me and I was unpopular. And when the glasses were the target, at least they made themselves look stupider.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 06:14 pm (UTC)I don't have any memories of choosing frames until my 3rd pair, when I was 10. Which is when we established the now familiar tradition of me being absolutely unable to find any I liked. Although at that age I was getting to the awkward stage of too big for little children's glasses, but far too small for adult's ones. I really liked plastic frames though (I believe my lenses were too thick for metal at that time anyway - this was before they could thin them) and they were becoming unpopular (presumably everyone rebelling against the thoroughly out-dated and unfashionable NHS glasses (http://www.kbss27.be/ngn/photos/secondary.jpg).)
I think I was probably older when I came to the realisation that nothing I ever did was going to matter - people just didn't like me and were going to find *some* reason to pick on me. It was probably when I was about 14 and moved to my upper school. Being insulted by people I'd never even seen before... My high school had been small enough (about 150 in each of the three years) that you knew everyone in your year by sight at least, and most people in the other two years.
That was all rambley and not really of interest to anyone...
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 06:20 pm (UTC)My family was disliked, so I knew that I wouldn't be. Although most of my teachers liked me because I was a good student, both intelligent and well-behaved. As you might imagine, that did wonders for me socially as a child. *G*
Fortunately, while I had to deal with a lot of crap, ranging from normal teasing and ostracism to outright abuse and life-endangerment, I somehow managed to be spared what may be the worst effect of these assaults, which was blaming myself. I always felt that the people picking on me were wrong and it was happening because they were evil. I felt this a little more absolutely than was really fair at times, but it still was very helpful in protecting me. So, I didn't end up thinking I deserved it or blaming myself for it.
It did, however, take me a really long time to see value in other human beings. And I was incredibly smugly superior for a long time. But quite frankly, I think that's a lot better than being crushed, and exposure to good people helped with that a lot.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 07:51 pm (UTC)Here, I think that'd be illegal, to make a kid remove their glasses for anything other than, say, swimming. If it's a safety hazard, you're expected to provide the insanely geeky safety goggles that fit over everything.