fragment 2

The principal of our school once made an entire netball team cry. They had lost a game, or two, and he ripped into them, telling them they were lazy and hopeless.

He was a tall man with broad shoulders, who was natural at sport of any kind. Anyone without some ability with a ball, or a stick, or in the pool, was looked down upon. Mocked even. He certainly took every opportunity to rub in any girl’s sporting inadequacies.

As I could barely swim across a pool, let alone the length, and thought ball games the most ridiculous waste of time ever invented, I was not a favourite.

I played netball because we had to, not because I enjoyed it. I could barely put the bib on the right way, never mind catching the ball and throwing it to the best person, or putting it through a hoop. If it was a friendly game, that was fine, I could enjoy the running around and just be silly.

Tennis was the only game that I could play with any skill, but my serving technique was seriously lame. Most of my serves got into the right place, but a toddler could have returned them so slow and gently did the ball lob over the net. The ‘skill’ was obviously limited, as I never represented the school, or played seriously.

I could run in primary school, and enjoyed the feeling of getting a place, but once puberty hit, I seemed to slow to glacial pace. High jump was a torment. I tried again and again to get over the bar, but always hit it. Eventually I lost my nerve, and flat out refused to try anymore, despite the teacher’s urging. Same with gymnastics.

There was one netball game where the ball hit me in the chest, and I must have been winded, because I started having trouble breathing, and was gulping in air. I wasn’t hurt as such, but I was aware that one of my classmates, a girl who was fairly good at sport, was bending over with laughter.

I started laughing too, and I don’t quite know why. Probably I wanted to be seen to get the joke, fit in with the others, that sort of thing. But what I was actually feeling at that moment was a particular sort of pain, not a physical one. The classmate had thrown the ball directly at me, hard, knowing I would not catch it because my reflexes weren’t that good. I was the non-sporty one, the dag, the swat.

But trying to laugh whilst being winded produced a strange effect. I was desperately trying to stop the heaving of my chest, but not succeeding, and instead, it became worse. So much so that later another girl told me she’d heard I’d had a fit.

That moment: the classmate bending over whooping with laughter, others laughing too, me struggling for breath, trying to maintain some slight sliver of dignity, but also trying to join in with the hilarity, to be one of them, not the outsider.

I recognise that what I also felt, besides the humiliation, the pain, the difficulty breathing, was a rage, a burning rage. But instead of letting rip and laying into the classmate, I swallowed it. It was a bitter meal, and undigested. Years later, I remember my classmate throwing that ball, and the bitterness comes back, sharper than ever.