Sports and I don’t go together. It’s like mixing custard and soda. I’m custard; indolent, lethargic and I curdle when put in the sun too long. Sports is soda; fizzy, annoying, and it gives you gas.
A human automatically hates something they are not good at no matter how much they try, and when it comes to physical exertion I have tried and failed.
There are several reasons to my vehement hatred of all things physical. The first reason is that I am not good at it. I am the kind of girl that you find in the library reading a good book or sitting down quietly listening to music, rather than sweating it out in the playground with my peers. My hand-eye coordination is zero.
The second reason is that my P.E teacher has a severe vendetta against me, and for some bizarre reason, finds pleasure in doling out physical tasks to me alone, specially designed to bring me to near death with exhaustion and stop my heart beating.
The third reason is that apart from being healthy, I find exercise pointless. My biology teacher would scream in horror, as would, I’m sure, other healthy lifestyle specialists, but that is a fact. I do not see the need in being forced to run two kilometres in under six minutes because unless I become a convict or engage in a profession that requires a lot of running, which are usually careers that are not entirely legal, I do not under any circumstances need to spend eighty minutes each week being timed while I am forced to run two thousand meters.
I am inevitably mercilessly teased by my peers because of my lack of fitness, and when it is time for the heats, the short kid with asthma and sinus problem sniggers as he knows even he can beat me at the hundred meter sprint. I don’t sprint. I amble. I run a little bit faster than a 1959 Chevy truck with a puncture, and I know an old Chevy isn’t a particularly speedy vehicle, let alone a punctured one.
I had lessons on how to run when I was in year 4. I know for a fact that that isn’t normal. Normal human beings know how to run without any extra help because it comes naturally, right after walking, but I guess that particular strand of chromosome overlooked me. And the fact that I run like “I’m walking fast” as my P.E teacher puts it, doesn’t help at all. But the verity that all the delightful people in my class remember my year 4 P.E teacher’s valiant attempts to get me to run properly, and remind me without fail at every possible opportunity they get, might also have something to do with why I hate doing sport so much.
I’m also always the last to get picked for teams. I don’t necessarily mind as I’m pretty much used to it after ten years of it, but it does gnaw at the old ‘self confidence’ a tad.
To make things worse, the megalomaniac-torturous-love deprived heads of the athletic department of the school have also found a way to compile a list of my least favourite activities all in one calendar year. The fact that the activities that top my “Sports never ever to do even if my life depends on it” list, such as swimming, football, and the dreaded athletics, does not, obviously, help me lessen my loathing of exercise in any way either.
But I am open-minded about it. I appreciate that those who love sports love it because it makes them happy and keeps them fit. I am not oblivious to the fact it sends endorphins raging through your body, but I prefer to send endorphins raging through my body through chocolate. Many others do it because there it is their form of entertainment and it is something they love to do. Football for example, is one of the most common past times, and invokes such passion around the world. Perhaps I’d be more passionate about football if it wasn’t mandatory for me to wear a silly orange jersey and run around a pitch subject to jeering once a week for an entire term of my academic year.
I am an extremely lazy person, but laziness is nothing more than resting before you get tired. Rather than hockey or athletics, I am the yoga-doing, synchronized-swimming, indoor rock-climbing type of girl. Moreover, sport’s purpose in this day and age has almost been completely forgotten. Most of my friends train for football or athletics because it keeps them slim, not because they love the sheer exhilaration that comes with it.
If I could run, or was the least bit physically fit in any way, I’d love sport. Mainly because I would be able to do it well, and the fact that I am a perfectionist is one of my flaws. Anything that I know I cannot do well no matter how hard I try is wasted time and effort for me as I know I could be using that time to improve something I know I am already good at. Physical fitness is just not in my genes. There isn’t a single person in my family who was a good athlete, unless the exercise of the brain counts. My uncle was a chess champion after all, and my dad is a sports critic (but that doesn’t really count because that just involves sitting in front of the television and yelling rude things at the screen which even I can do.)
I may appear apathetic, but I do know what I am missing because my body decided not to produce the DNA necessary for development in terms of physical fitness.
Sport isn’t the right thing for this 1959 Chevy truck, but things can change.
Or not.
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