Jocks

My least favourite kind of jock...

   I encountered jocks for the first time back in high school. I'm guessing that this is where most of us begin our relationships with jocks. Actually, before I continue, I should clarify that when I say "jock" I am not referring to the article of athletic apparel but more directly to the athlete himself. I have never had a problem with the jock you wear, in fact it is one of my favourite pieces of athletic clothing. Unfortunately, it was a different story with the human variety.

My favourite kind of jock...

   Generally, you run into your first jocks in gym class. They're the kids who, although only in Grade 9, already seem to have known the phys ed teacher their whole lives. They joke with him, talk sports with him and are physically able to do almost whatever he asks them to do.
   That was never me. In the first place, I've pretty well always been more comfortable around women and, secondly, for a variety of reasons there were many aspects of phys ed I either didn't get or simply couldn't perform. For the life of me. Rope climbing was one, but that's probably a blog unto itself.
   I began to inhabit that middle ground between the land of the jocks and the land of the nerds. With my friends in the neighbourhood, I was always playing one sport or another and was actually quite adept. This never translated too well in school, however. The little bit of athletic ability I did have managed to elevate me a touch above nerdism but never even came close to making me a jock. Which was fine. I flirted enough around the edges of jockism to find myself on the junior football team, the senior basketball team and the senior volleyball team at Oakridge. These associations had me rubbing shoulders with jocks on a regular basis (what was I thinking?) and they and I very quickly realized just how out-of-place I actually was. More than anything, I guess, I got in their way. They'd go in for a lay-up and, when they came down, I, for some reason, would be right underneath them. This apparently made made me a dip-stick once when it happened to the star of the team, right from the star's mouth. It was hard to run plays in practice because I, knowing where the ball was going, always got in the way of it. This did not elicit a positive response from a couple of the jocks on the team. They'd pass around orange slices at half time of a football game and give me a hard time if I took one because I hadn't played much, if at all.

   I actually got cut from both the football team and the basketball team but ended back on both of them, for different reasons and miraculously. Apparently I didn't get the hint. For whatever reason, this enabled me to continue my square-peg-in-a-round-hole experience with high school sports and the world of jocks.
   Fortunately, this experience never actually included any form of physical confrontation with any of the jocks I ran across, I always tried pretty hard to stay under the radar. At the same time, they had other ways of making my life miserable.
   Round about Grade 10, I fell in love with a cheerleader. I didn't fall in love with her because she was a cheerleader, I just fell in love with her. She, however, was relegated to the category of all-time-stereotypical-jock-gets-what-he-doesn't-deserve-just-like-in-a-teen-movie as she, of course, was the girlfriend of the captain of the senior football team. So, due to this jock I didn't even know, my life was ruined, at least for a month or so.

   About the same time I was in love with the cheerleader, I was also in love with my Spanish teacher (yes, I really had enough love to spread around back in those days) and I truly felt there was something special between us. I felt this way right up to the Xmas break. Upon returning from the break, we were all informed that she had, in the meantime, gotten married. Not only had she been stolen from me, she had been stolen from me by.....my gym teacher! This made a low moment even that much lower.
   Eventually, I continued to fall in love with a different girl every couple of months or so and the pain of these two losses slowly diminished. In Grades 12 and 13, I ended up on the volleyball team. The Oakridge volleyball team is much storied and has a history of being one of the top volleyball powers in the province. And all this started just after I played for them. In my day with the team, we were pretty well a bunch of nerds dressed up as athletes. We did not win a game in the year previous to my starting to play and we did not win a game in the two years I was on the team. There was absolutely no jockism on the team, we stole no one's girlfriend, we intimidated no one and I'm pretty sure no one looked up to us. We did have some fun and actually came close to winning once or twice in my final year. I spent my last year on the team as captain and MVP and at the year-end awards banquet found myself up there with all the other jocks, accepting my award. The irony was not lost on me!