The Silliest Thing I Keep On Doing
For years I’ve suffered an enduring relationship of unrequited love with sports or anything remotely athletic. “I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen,” Cusack’s character said in the film. My line would be, “I gave him my heart and he said ‘Who u?’”
Let me explain.
Sophomore year high, an aunt paid for me to take squash lessons at the Manila Boat Club. These were private lessons with a personal coach. I never got to learn the rules of the game much less how to actually wield a racket. But I kept on going for a couple of months anyway to ogle Richard Gomez while he practiced rowing and because the club had really good fruit shakes.
Junior year high, I took up the racket again. For tennis this time. My failed affair with squash didn’t douse my spirits. I figure, how much sense does it really make to try scoring points against a wall anyway, right? It wasn’t that I was a poor athlete, it was that squash was a stupid game. Besides, all the cuties were in tennis―Agassi, Sampras… So that summer, some of my tennis pro cousins agreed to teach me the beloved sport of Wimbledon. After a month my racket suffered a brutal death: blunt force trauma from being rammed against a tennis net post. It was a crime of passion brought about by the perp’s frustration over the racket’s unwillingness to do what it was told, i.e. stop hitting the friggin’ net.
Still, I was relentless.
It wasn’t me, it was the gear.
I was in senior year high and I resolved to choose a sport that entailed only my natural-born athletic physique… That year I broke my forearm during volleyball in P.E. class.
College was no different. I had a good cardio regimen in ping-pong class from running and retrieving balls. I developed an eye for spotting lopsided billiard tables because that’s the only chance I had of actually winning. But I soon discovered that in a battle of chamba versus skill, skill eventually wins. For the love of God I couldn’t even play a sport that men with thrice my weight and half my teeth were good at!
A girl can only take so much rejection. And so I took my spurned little heart out of the hard court and moved on.
Cut to three years ago: I promised my close friend Karla that I would go on one of her surf trips. I made good on my word last April. Of course, I had no plans of actually surfing. I was in need of a tan retouch.
But mid-soak in the water, surrounded by urbanites who had signed up for the surf clinic, the memory of an old love rose to the fore…
Let me digress a bit: You know that metaphor about moths getting lured and burned by a flame? Well, what the fable doesn’t mention is that moths are actually a lot smarter than they’re given credit for. They get one of their wings toasted and that’s it. But people? HA! I don’t know if it’s because drinking just isn’t as fun unless you have any tales of woe, but people absolutely cannot help but beg to get screwed over again and again and again.
“Scan thy battleground…”
“Know thy enemy…”
Which is why when Karla asked me, “You wanna try?”, my reply went behind my brain’s back and flew straight out of my mouth: “Sure!”
“Actually, okay na ‘ko dito…“
Karla’s boyfriend, T-Moe (Teacher Moro), was a surf teacher and would give me lessons pro bono. We started with a ground session before hitting the water. We had to figure out if I was left-legged or right-legged, as the verdict would determine which one I should stand with first on the board. And there’s a very scientific way of finding out. Standing behind me, Karla asked me to stand smack dab on the center of the board, shoulders leveled, back straight, arms symmetric but relaxed at my sides… THEN SHE PUSHED ME. I broke the fall with my right leg, and hence determined that I was right-legged!
“…sinabi nang okay na ‘ko dun, e…”
The water session had me trying several times to stand on the board once I caught a wave. It was a sunny day and the waves were gentle and beginner-friendly. But every time T.Moe would say, “Okay! Ready! Paddle!” and push the board anyway (me along with it) despite my cries of “Wait! No! Wait! I’m not ready! Where do I put my knee again?”, I felt like I was caught in that nanosecond between the captain of the Titanic squinting and then screaming, “Icebeeeeeeerg!!!!”
Oh I would manage to push myself up on the board, my knees would wobble, then I’d wipe out in several versions of wa-poise. Over and over again.
Post wipeout, the typically dejected seek the succor of a cold beer…
…and a cold banana-Oreo smoothy, or what I prefer to call “Mukhang lupa, lasang heben!”
Although you know what? It was actually fun! I figure I had to work on my “surfer laid-back mindset.” I mean, my brain was on overdrive repeating the steps to myself: “Okay, push up, then prop right leg, lunge low first, follow with left leg, then stand…” But most of all, there was the anxiety over possible wardrobe malfunction: since I had no intentions on surfing, I was wearing a tiny bikini held by string.
I guess it’s easy to say that I feel my silliest in the midst of doing anything remotely sporty. But, really, you can’t deny the evident: It wasn’t me, it was the swimsuit.