A few weeks ago, over dinner, some people were talking about games they played as a child. They talked about tag. Red rover. And suddenly the mention of those threw me back into my childhood…where I was the loner, the outcast, the one picked last.<\/p>\n
As they talked and relived their nostalgia, I felt those small wounds surface. Even though I can laugh about it now, I just remember always being the part nobody wanted to be. There was a time when I played jump rope in kindergarten. I hated jump rope because we had to line up and I just wasn\\’t coordinated enough to jump between the ropes. Fortunately as my turn approached, one of the boys \\”accidentally\\” threw a rock at my head and the next thing I knew, I was in the nurse\\’s office. I also remember that monster game, a pseudo-tag game in the jungle gym. I was always the monster, because I wasn\\’t fast enough. I remember playing tag where I was always It, because I was too slow. And my sister at one point felt sorry for me and slowed down to let me tag her. (Of course, she tagged me right after she paused the requisite 10 seconds.) My dad videotaped this and the irony was that I was still laughing throughout. But then ultimately, isn\\’t that what childhood is all about? Despite the fact that I couldn\\’t skip, I couldn\\’t throw the ball right, I couldn\\’t run fast enough…despite all of that, I smiled and laughed…and had fun.<\/p>\n
Quite often, I look back on my childhood…always a bit sorrowful about how I felt rejected in school. One person told me that I need to come to terms with this, I need to not mourn it, but accept it. But all this makes who I am today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago, over dinner, some people were talking about games they played as a child. They talked about tag. Red rover. And suddenly the mention of those threw me back into my childhood…where I was the loner, the … Continue reading