I confess I hated gym class. If I was sent to the library instead I would have been happier. However. Human beings are animals and need to move. But all those games of dodge ball in the Campton Gym? I was soooo miserable. But not as miserable as the days I walked into the Campton Gymnasium and sniffed the smell of dank white canvas. Sure enough. There was the torture rack, more commonly known as a trampoline, sitting there. After we unlaced our tennis shoes and threw them in a pile near the door, we moved to the contraption and surrounded it. My hands felt like I’d been throwing snowballs without wearing mittens. My feet were cold and numb as if I’d been night skating in January.
As we stood around the circumference of the trampoline, waiting our turn, I feared for my life... and for the life of others. Mr Gere had explained we were spotters. I quivered to think I was responsible for keep my classmates from popping off onto the gym floor and breaking their necks. I was so weak. So puny. I'd never be able to stop anyone hurtling toward me after a bad bounce.
The line moved me ever closer to the end of the trampoline, the end where a three-step, movable stair unit led up to the bouncy platform of peril. Soon I would be forced onto the trampoline to demonstrate my inability to accomplish even the simplest of skills, the seat drop.
I had barely enough bend in the knees to walk myself to the middle of the canvas. As I timidly attempted to create some air between my feet and the surface of the trampoline one of the boys noticed my feet. “Look at her toes. They point up.” Someone called them Turkish toes. The laughter rippled around me. They weren’t lying, my toes did point upwards. If my cotton socks were golden instead of white they’d have fit right into the world of Aladdin or any other story about exotic lands in the East. But I was no Aladdin. A more appropriate name was Miss Chicken.
