In My Book, C is for Cookie

Hello again blogging world. I've missed you so. Okay, so I know it has been almost a year since I've written anything, but...I've been busy? Okay, more like, I've been lazy. I have no excuses. So here is a little tidbit to wet your whistle on.

I never aspired to be a cheerleader. There are a few key reasons why. 1. Cheerleading was not cool in my high school. I wouldn't have been into it even if it were cool, but it really wasn't cool. 2. I'm a realist. My body was not cheerleading material. And 3. I would have been ridiculed endlessly in my family.

Now my mom forced me to do a lot of things in the name of exercise, but the year she forced me into cheerleading camp...well that was just cruel. Worse than the year she signed me up for the swim team as a 260 lb. teenage girl. Did she actually think that was a good idea? I'm trying to figure out her thought process, it must have been something like this...

"Kim is really getting heavy. I need to get her involved in some kind of activity that would make her feel good about herself AND get her some good exercise. I know, I'll sign her up the our area's highly competitive swim team. They have to take anyone, and I know that she will LOVE getting into a swimsuit every single day for a year. That's it. Swim team it is. She is going to be so excited!"

The sad thing is, that probably wasn't too far off from what she was thinking. My mom has an extremely high self esteem.

Anywho, back to the story. So, it was the summer after 5th grade. A fairly uneventful summer, I can't remember anything about it until August. My mom was a Young Women's Leader and Girl's Camp rolled around. She and my two older sisters were going to camp, but I was only 11. The older boys all had jobs, and my dad has never taken a day off work in his life. I'm not kidding, I had foot surgery when I was 19, he dropped me off at the hospital. He didn't even come in and do the pre-op stuff with me. I know I was 19 but I was still a little scared. Anyway, missing work was not his forte and he certainly wasn't going to take a week off to hang out with me. In retrospect I don't know why they didn't just let me hang out at home. I'm sure they didn't know where we were 90 percent of the time anyway.

Moving on. So my mom is gone for the week and my dad has to work. What to do with Kim. Lucky for me, the high school was sponsoring cheerleading camp. Oh joy. What obese teen doesn't want to wear short shirts and jump around with other girls literally half their size?

There are many painful details about cheerleading camp that I could share, but I'll hit the highlights. 1. I did not have an awesome attitude about cheer camp. I wanted to die every moment, every cheer, every hurkey, every spread eagle... sheer torture for me and my fat self. Just picture in your head, I'm all red from "dancing" and me and my 2 inch vertical are trying to spread my eagle in the .003 seconds I'm off the ground, this of course is accompanied by a grunt, how could it not be? It wasn't pretty.

However, when they sat us all down and the high school cheerleaders spelled out the word CHEERLEADER and told us what each letter meant, I literally had to cover my mouth so I wouldn't laugh out loud. "L is for Lush because as a cheerleader you totally get wasted every weekend after the big game." Okay that was mean, all cheerleaders are hating me right now.

The final straw was the last day when we sat down in our little groups and we went around the circle and had to say why we wanted to be cheerleaders. Big obnoxious..okay skinny obnoxious girl who had been grating on my nerves all week said, "I want to be a cheerleader because I like to be loud." I said, "we can tell." Next Sweet Quiet Girl said, "I want to be a cheerleader because that's what my dad wanted me to be before he died." WHAT? I'm next I follow Dead-dad's-dream girl, and what do I say? No, not, "I'm just trying cheerleading out." Not, "I'm here to learn." I said with my same snotty attitude, "I don't want to be a cheerleader. I hate cheerleading! my mom made me come because she is out of town this week, and my dad had to work." That is what came after Dead-Dad's-Dream-Girl. Ahhhh. Could I have been a bigger jerk?

Needless to say, I did not become a cheerleader in high school. My thighs continued to be too big, and my attitude not nearly perky enough. Let's be honest the only thing C will ever stand for in my book is Cookie.