Gymnastics Meet

Any resemblance to the truth is entirely accidental.

Tom and I became buddies back in the 7th grade. We might have first met through the wrestling team, where he wrestled in the lightest weight classes. It might just as easily have been through orchestra or the baseball team. We tried all the sports back in those days. Tom was good at all of them. He was easily the most gifted athlete I’d ever known.

I remember Tom telling me that he began his gymnastics training back in elementary school. I think his parents had a connection to a teacher who was a former gymnast. He recognized Tom’s talent early on and began training him with the blessing of his parents. Tom did all the normal sports the rest of us were doing, but somehow slipped in his gymnastics workouts in addition to everything else. The junior high school did not have a gymnastics team, but the high school did.

When Tom reached high school he cut all the other sports out of his schedule except gymnastics. Well, that is mostly true. During his senior year he ran cross country with me and was able to make it into the top 7 which comprised the varsity. There were probably only 14 guys on the entire team. I remember Tom’s folks saying it was one of the proudest athletic accomplishments in his life because it was the only sport he wasn’t naturally good at. This pleased me immensely because it was also the only sport I could thoroughly kick his butt in.

Anyway, all of this is a prelude to say that I would from time to time go to the high school gymnastics meets to watch Tom compete. It wasn’t a ball sport, so attendance was always light. The only people who showed up were family and close friends. The gymnasium was quite large and would easily accommodate a couple thousand in the stands. For a gymnastics meet there might be 50 people in the stands.

At the gymnastics meets only one event was conducted at a time, and only one athlete performed at a time. In a dual meet each team would enter a couple of scoring competitors in each event and maybe one or two who performed in exhibition. Tom was a state contender in his very first year, competed in every event, and was probably a multiple state champion.

There was absolutely no noise at the meets while an athlete was performing. It was as quiet as a church during silent prayer. Between events the spectators might speak in low voices or whisper, but during the competition there was no noise at all and nobody moved. Latecomers stood in the hallway waiting for an athlete to finish his routine before slipping not too quietly into the stands while everyone stared at them for the racket they were making.

There was this one meet against our cross-town archrivals, Jefferson High School, that I particularly remember. Jefferson had a kid who on a good day could give Tom some trouble, so it was a big meet for Tom. It would give Tom an idea of where he stood going into the state meet.

I remember this one meet well because I brought my dad along. Tom and I had spent a good deal of time at each other’s houses, so Dad had gotten to know Tom pretty well. I’d told Dad about some of the incredible moves that Tom was able to perform in each of the events, and Dad wanted to see it. Dad was a fan of all sports.

The crowd was a little bit bigger at this meet because the two teams were the best in the state and arguably had the two best high school gymnasts in the state, Tom being one of them.

The event I remember especially well was the first event, the high bar. The spectators were a knowledgeable group, and were as quiet for each performance as golf spectators are for a Tiger Woods putt. We couldn’t even shift our weight in the bleachers from one butt cheek to the other in fear that the bleachers might make a slight creaking sound and distract the competitor.

So as Tom approached the high bar in silence to begin his routine, suddenly this man sitting next to me makes a megaphone out of his hands and starts shouting, “C’MON TOM, YOU CAN DO IT, SHOW EM HOW ITS DONE, TOM.” At that point every person in the gymnasium snapped their heads around to stare at the man sitting next to me, my father. (Richard/Dick) I wanted to DIE. I imagined every one of them thinking, “Who is that mad man?” I’d had the same thought many times.

You would think that a grown man in a new environment might be cautious and observant. You would think that he might watch the local customs and do likewise. You would think that when in Rome the man would do what the Romans do. Not my dad.

I kept my eyes focused straight ahead, not wanting to acknowledge what had just happened. I didn’t want anyone in the room to know I was related to the old man (53 at that time, 5 years younger than I am now) sitting next to me. If I could have made myself smaller, I would have. If I could have slipped beneath the bleachers out of sight, that would have even been better. Tom didn’t let it bother him; he jumped up to grab a hold of the high bar with both hands and began his routine.

Dad continued to shout his commentary throughout the entire routine. “WAY TO GO TOM! EXCELLENT! BE TOUGH! HANG IN THERE. YEAH! WOW, GREAT MOVE, TOM!” Dad continued to yell encouragement as if it were a football game or a wrestling meet. Eventually a couple of other parents jumped in and started yelling and clapping along with my dad. I imagined my classmates dying the same death I was experiencing, death of embarrassment by parent. I wondered if they would blame me for my father leading their parents astray. I wondered if there was a Parents Union rule that if one parent did something totally wrong the others were required to jump in and do the same to make it appear normal.

Tom’s high bar routine, and my shame, seemed to last an eternity. They should have a Richter scale for moments like that. I don’t remember the ending of Tom’s routine or the end result. I was busy imagining myself in a quiet forest, all alone, where nobody knew me or the fact that I had a father. No doubt everyone stood up and applauded enthusiastically, perhaps even louder than normal given my father’s unusual form of leadership.

When the meet was over I felt obligated to apologize to Tom for my father’s social blunder. When I was done apologizing Tom said, “No, no, it was great, really. The silence at meets always makes me nervous. It was good having a steady stream of noise to relieve the tension. It didn’t bother me a bit. I need to thank your dad for coming.”

Ridiculous and unbygodbelievable! Not only was my dad NOT wrong by my friend’s assessment, my dad was almost, if not actually, cool. I hate it when that happens!

My life is a never-ending series of surprises.

40th HS Reunion - Epilogue

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Most of this was written under the influence of a single glass of wine. That is all it takes for a short hitter like me. It is now a day later and I am now under the influence of caramel-colored carbonated sugar water. (Coke) Surprisingly, the words still make some sense a day later. With a little judicious editing it may be worthy of posting.

I wondered if my words might strike a chord in others. I wrote the piece because I wondered if others had the same thoughts, or perhaps I was an outlier. (Merriam Webster - a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample) Ann has some of the same thoughts, and Bill says I am full of beans and an outlier. That is why I write the blog; to see if others feel the same way.

Those high school relationships seemed so close at the time, and yet they withered away in no time at all. I think that is interesting. Every time I go back home I am drawn back into that time and place, and the person I was 40 years ago. Every time I relive a high school memory I have to remind and reassure myself, “I am not that person anymore.”

I was struck by some dialogue from the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The following piece of dialogue, fiction of course, was spoken by Russell Crowe’s character, the captain of the ship, at the funeral for a midshipman, Mr. Hollom. The midshipman took his own life because the crew believed him to be a Jonah, one who brings bad luck to the ship.

The simple truth is, not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be.
But we are all God's creatures.
If there are those among us who thought ill of Mr. Hollom,
          or spoke ill of him,
          or failed him in respect of fellowship,
          then we ask for your forgiveness, Lord,
          and we ask for his.

This statement struck me in a contrasting sort of way; a black/white mirror image kind of contrast. I HAVE become the man I once hoped I might be, and I am happy with who I am, and I have no desire to relive the worst aspects of the teenage creature I once was. How is that for sanctimonious? (My new favorite word) But again, that may be the single glass of wine talking.

I read recently that you should never email under the alfluence of incohol. (Typos intended for humor)

I will post this tomorrow on the blog . . . maybe.

40th HS Reunion

I shouldn’t care, but I do, and that bothers me.

My high school class (1970) is holding its 40th reunion during the summer of 2010. The organizing committee has done a nice job of creating a web page for the reunion and a Facebook group. The web page asked for an information update so they could create a mini-yearbook. Each decade we’ve gone through this reunion exercise there has always been a freeform space to write anything I want. I am always perplexed what to say. This year I wrote the following:

“Every time we have a reunion I struggle with what to write in this space. What could I possibly say here that doesn’t sound sanctimonious? I am happy with my life. That should be sufficient.”

Yeah, I am not entirely happy with that snippy comment. I didn’t want to write a biography and I didn’t want to brag about my life and my family. There just isn’t much you can say without sounding like a jerk, which is exactly what I accomplished anyway.

Before writing my remark I looked through the names of the 58 classmates who had joined the Facebook group. The truth is that I barely remember any of the names listed there. This is disturbing because I had what I thought were the closest and dearest friendships during high school. I thought we would never lose touch and would always be the best of friends. There were close bonds in the orchestra, the concert choir, the cross country team, the track team, the wrestling team, the church youth group, the church choir, and with my classmates in general. We were a team in athletic competitions, concerts, plays, and worship. These teenage relationships seemed so deep and so pure that I could not imagine the bonds ever being broken.

I did not realize at that time that everyone would move on to different colleges and different towns. I don’t think a single HS classmate stayed in town to go to college at Coe like I did. Over the first 10 years I only saw my best friends a couple of times intentionally, and other classmates a couple of times accidentally. Relationships go both ways; it is as much my fault as theirs that we drifted apart. No, drifted is not the right word. Sped apart is more like it. Not intentionally away from each other, but intentionally pursuing our separate interests; first an education, then a job, and then a family, and soon there wasn’t time or interest in maintaining the past. There was only time to pursue the future.

 --
In the interest of detente I deleted a paragraph here detailing a specific loss of contact and my subsequent disappointment.
--

 On the few occasions when we have gotten together one of my friends delights in telling all within earshot all of the worst things I did as a teenager. It was pretty tame stuff for a teenager, but for some reason it is embarrassing as a mature adult to have someone else point out publicly that I was once a dumbass teenager. I have stories I could tell about this friend that are too dreadful to speak aloud. He is apparently comfortable that I will not besmirch his character in turn, and in this he is correct.  Turning the other cheek stinks.
 
So why would I go to my high school reunion and subject myself to this abuse? If it is to brag about myself and my family, that would make me a small, weak, and needy person. If it is to hear what became of my classmates, then wouldn’t this lead me to judge them based on their accomplishments, or to be judged myself? What does it matter what they, or I, did or did not do after high school? Who gets to determine what success is? It isn’t my measure of success they need to live up to. It is their measure of success that matters. Anyway, this isn’t a competition. If it is, it shouldn’t be.

Perhaps my greatest fear is the one I’d rather not speak of at all and have deleted from this piece multiple times. What if nobody cares whether I show up, and if I do show up, nobody cares that I did show up. Ouch. That would hurt. But honestly, why should anyone care? We are no longer participants in each other’s lives. We are only spectators of each other’s lives at this point. We have so little to do with each other that my presence or absence doesn’t matter all that much. Why would I worry about hurt feelings when we are separated by decades and distance, both before and after the reunion? It’s an interesting point I have been struggling with for weeks and have been unable to resolve.

I would like to say that I don’t care about this reunion or my former friends. I would like to say that, but it would not be true. I do care, but why? Perhaps it’s because we spent our formative years together. It wasn’t war. It wasn’t a “band of brothers” experience, but it was our own personal coming of age crucible. We survived teenage angst together. We survived high school together. We suffered through those years together as insufferable teenagers. We survived each other.

I guess the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter why I care about my classmates. It is what it is. There is no point in trying to make rational arguments about emotions. My Vulcan hero Mr. Spock (Star Trek) would say, “It is not logical.”

I hope my old friends have had wonderful lives, and I hope they are doing well, but I don’t think I will be going back to see them at the 40th reunion. I don’t want them to worry that I might be judging them, and I don’t want to be judged. I also don’t want to risk finding out that nobody cares whether I am there or not. Perhaps I will risk it at 50 years.

The Living Room

It always started simply enough, but never seemed to start the same way twice. Dad (Richard/Dick) would stop me in the kitchen by giving me a friendly shove on the shoulder. “You’re getting to be a pretty big kid.” (I was probably 10 years old.) “How tough are you?” He’d smile as he started to push me backwards towards the living room and I started pushing back.

Or I’d be walking through the living room while my brother Al was reading a science fiction paperback on the floor. Suddenly his hand would shoot out and grab my ankle. “C’mon Al, let me go!” I’d say. With a smile he’d say, “Make me!”

Or I’d be headed into the kitchen and Al would be blocking the doorway. “Excuse me.” I’d say. Al might say “What’s the password?” It wouldn’t matter what I’d guess. It would be wrong no matter what, and he’d grab a limb. “Aw, c’mon Al, I don’t have time for this.” And the reply might be, “Then you better escape quickly.”

- Thus began numerous informal wrestling matches in the living room. –

It was around 1962 when I was 10 years old and in the 5th grade when the living room wrestling matches began for me. Al would have been a senior in high school and Dad was about 46. Al and Dad had probably been wrestling each other for several years prior, but my juvenile memory does not include that as a fact. I do remember being very proud that I was old enough to be included in the informal wrestling matches. It meant that another milestone toward maturity had been reached.

Al was an extremely successful wrestler on the high school team, and Dad had wrestled for the University of Iowa back in the late 1930’s (37-40), so I was at an extreme disadvantage due to both age and experience; all of which is a polite way of pointing out that I got hammered.

I had no idea what I was doing at first. Most of my time was spent on the bottom or on my back getting pinned in a variety of tortuous holds. I only got to be in the offensive position if they permitted it out of a sense of mercy.

As time went on I started to recognize the various moves and positions through observation and repetition. Later on these moves took on names like cross face, sit-out, cross-body, switch, roll, single-leg, cradle, false cradle, and near arm – far ankle. As I learned these moves by example, I also learned the counter moves, but I was only able to execute these if Al and Dad were wrestling at 50% of their ability.

It wasn’t frustrating. It was fun. I was just a kid. I shouldn’t be able at that age to beat full-grown men. It made me feel like I belonged to something special. I imagined I was a member of a special group of people, a fraternity of warriors, who had secret knowledge and secret skills. Ten year olds have great imaginations.

Sometimes when Al and I were wrestling, Dad would walk in and start telling me what to do. Or when Dad and I were wrestling Al would come by and say, “Tom, it looks like you could use some help.” whereupon we would both wrestle Dad to submission. Other times it was Dad jumping in to help me wrestle Al.

We liked to say that Dad had chosen the house in Cedar Rapids for the large living room. It was big enough to be used as a private wrestling room. The carpet was a tight weave that couldn’t be harmed, and often harmed us. Anytime a bare piece of skin rubbed too quickly against the carpet surface I’d get a painful rug burn. It happened all too often. The next week would be spent with an oozing sore on my elbow or my knee which would rub painfully against my clothing.

It was the living room furniture that was in greatest jeopardy when these wrestling matches broke out. I don’t think we ever broke anything, but we came extremely close. We would crash into the couch, the end tables, the legs of the dining room table, and the chairs. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture that didn’t get banged at least once. Beating your opponent was more important than a mere piece of furniture. Mom (Gladys) would come rushing out of the kitchen pulling movable objects out of the way without getting crushed herself. She’d pleasantly scold us to be careful and “Don’t hurt your father!”, and we would all laugh. Someone was bound to get hurt, but that was part of the fun; to prove that you could take a lick or two.

The matches were over whenever Al and Dad said they were over, which was always the point of complete exhaustion for me. My clothes would be soaked with sweat. My hair would be matted down and dripping into my ears. Before heading off to shower for the second time that day I’d first have to hunt for my glasses which had been thrown under a table or couch for safety at the beginning of the roughhousing.

When Al headed off to college Dad and I continued to wrestle from time to time. There was a day in my teenage years when I came to realize that I wasn’t wrestling at full effort anymore. I was holding back when wrestling Dad, and I knew if a score were being kept that I was winning. I’d always thought that that day would be a day of great triumph for me; that I’d finally beaten my father. It was a milestone, but it gave me no pleasure. It made me sad. Dad was no longer the all-powerful, all-knowing superman I’d known as a kid. Once I’d beaten him wrestling he became a mere mortal, like me, and could no longer protect me from anything and everything. I was now responsible for taking care of myself. I could no longer claim to be “just a kid” anymore.

I don’t know what it meant to my dad, but I know what it meant to me as a dad when my son John could first beat me wrestling and roughhousing, and if the truth be told, my daughter Ann as well. As a parent it was a day of celebration and great pride in my kids. Yet another milestone had been reached. It meant that they were physically better able to take care of themselves than I was. It meant they had yet another reason to be self-confident. It meant that the kids were getting closer to independence. Isn’t that what all parents want?

Lately when I see my adult kids I like to give them a playful shove on the shoulder, just as my dad used to do to me, as if to say “How tough are you?” Ann’s response is to threaten to hurt me, and she could, and she has. John’s response is to grab one of my limbs and smile, at which point Jean calls out, “DON’T HURT YOUR FATHER!”

A Good Day

Tom was one of my best buddies in high school.  Yeah, we had the same name; an unfortunate coincidence.  Tom and I had a number of interesting adventures.  This isn’t one of them.

Tom had a teammate on the gymnastics team that he wanted to adopt as another one of our best buds.  When Tom described this guy to me I was surprised that Tom wanted to include this guy as one of our close colleagues.  His name was Gray.  Gray was an apt name for this fellow.  It was not only his name, but also his personality.

Gray wasn’t a bad guy, but he was so quiet and, well, normal, that nobody really noticed him.  He had few friends and he had no interests outside of gymnastics.  He was of average height, average weight, and average everything else you can think of.  Perhaps the only thing exceptional about Gray was his strength, which was a natural byproduct of his chosen sport, gymnastics.  I suspected that Gray was quite intelligent, but he was always so quiet that I couldn’t quite be sure.

So it became our mission during our junior year in high school to include Gray in our activities whenever possible.  This wasn’t easy since Gray’s normal routine was to go to school, go to gymnastics practice, and then stay at home until it was time to go to school again.  This included weekends.  He didn’t willingly leave his house except for school.  Gray was a teenage recluse.

There was this one winter weekend when Tom and I convinced Gray to go tobogganing with us on a Saturday afternoon.  I have no doubt that it took some cajoling to get Gray to leave his house and go with us.  My family had an 8-man wooden toboggan (a year from now it will become a 10-man toboggan) that might comfortably hold 6 real people, and was just perfect for 3 rambunctious boys, well, at least two of us anyway. 

My dad encouraged adventures of all kinds, so naturally we had a toboggan in the rafters of our garage.  Remind me to tell you about our episode with the WWII 45 caliber semiautomatic handgun.  Also remind me to tell you about the days camping on the island in the middle of the Mississippi River up near McGregor, Iowa. 

Anyway, Tom, Gray, and I got the toboggan out of the rafters of the garage and tied it onto the top of Mom’s car and headed off to Jones Park.  Jones Park was on the far side of Cedar Rapids and had one of the few major hills in the city that was bare of trees.  The Parks Department had even built a toboggan ramp to facilitate the activity.

We parked at the bottom of the hill so that we would have a short walk to the car after our last toboggan run.  We trudged up the hill through the deep fluffy snow next to the toboggan run, noting that the run itself was tightly packed due to hundreds of transits (Good word!), all of which is irrelevant to the main point of the story but provides a modicum of context.

We finally made our way to the top of the hill, waited impatiently in line, and began our trip down the hill on the toboggan.  Jones Park had a hellacious hill, so the ride was fast and long.  It was a notable achievement if your run took you beyond the hard packed snow of all the other riders into the fluffy untouched snow at the base of the hill.  Since all three of us were jocks in the minor sports we felt compelled to use our hands to pull ourselves forward into the virgin snow, thereby “winning” the toboggan run by distance, as if such a competition existed.

Since none of us fell off during the run, I threw Tom off the toboggan.  It had to be done.  It is bad form to finish a toboggan run without a disaster of some kind along the way; either real or contrived.  Tom in turn yanked me off the toboggan, whereupon we both tackled Gray and knocked him into the soft snow on the other side of the toboggan. Thus began an hour-long wrestling match in the snow.

It was a cold subzero day, so we were all wearing multiple layers of long underwear, blue jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and gloves.  We didn’t look exactly like the Pillsbury Doughboy, but we came close.  There was no way we could hurt each other without a direct blow to the head. 

Over the course of the hour we changed allegiances frequently and without notice.  It was Tom and Tom against Gray, then Tom and Gray against Tom, then the other Tom and Gray against Tom, then everybody against everybody, and then back through the rotation again.  We wrestled and beat on each other without pause, laughing and giggling at our ineffective efforts.  We yelled insults, faked horrific blows, roared in mock indignation, and attempted to wrestle each other to submission. I’d never seen Gray so happy, as was I.

For one hour we were little kids again.  For one hour we were able to escape the all-consuming worries of a teenager’s life.  Gone were thoughts of chores, term papers, homework, grades, girlfriends, college searches, the future, and the expectations of parents, teachers, coaches, and classmates.  We were little kids again, and we celebrated the moment by gleefully thrashing each other.

We never made it back up the hill for a second toboggan run; we were too exhausted from wrestling.  Still, we went home happy.  It remains one of my fondest memories of those days.