School! A loathsome place at times. Your school days are the best time of your life, they say. Anyone who thinks that must have a pretty miserable time being an adult. That's another thing about school. They don't treat you like an adult.
OK. It's fair enough when you first start school. You are a child, after all. But as you progress through school you age, you mature, you damned well grow up. I'm a senior. I'm eighteen. I can smoke, drink, drive, vote, do anything I want (provided it's legal), unless I'm at school.
As soon as I walk through the school gate I'm considered a child again, hedged about with a host of school rules, most of which don't make sense when applied to an adult. Who invents these rules? The school board. Who is on the school board? Those people who love controlling others and making them obey silly little rules. They always have reasons for the rules; it's just that the reasons rarely make sense to anyone except the school board.
Ever notice how the older female teachers try to enforce their idea of proper clothing on the students? If I want to dress like a fifty year old woman then I'm quite happy to wait until I'm fifty to do so. I have no intention of doing so now.
Would you believe Mrs Frothingham had a go at my current outfit? Did I really think it was an appropriate outfit to wear to school? Well, yes. That's why I'm wearing it. Just because her taste favours tweed jackets and a yashmak for young girls it doesn't mean that mine does.
Actually, that's why I scored detention today. I pointed out that my yashmak was at the cleaners and she wasn't amused. A detention for insolence. Totally not fair. She was insolent first.
At least the detention was over and done with and I was making my escape. One small step, from one side of the gate to the other and lo, I am an adult. You make sense of it. I can't.
I was strolling past the gym and the gym doors were open. Unusual as the place is normally locked after the last class. Someone must have forgotten. Glancing through the open door as I passed I spotted a couple of those giant gym balls and I stopped. I've seen some of those gifs and videos on the internet of people using those balls. Usually they're of people having accidents but there have been some showing people doing some interesting stunts with the balls.
Now I'm a cheerleader and we're always looking for new material. I started thinking about how we might work some of those balls into a couple of our routines. How hard could it be, I wondered, to bounce on a giant ball?
The thought was father to the deed. I wandered into the gym to look the balls over. Up to this point I'm pretty sure that I wasn't breaking any rules. You're not supposed to use the gym equipment unsupervised in case there's an accident and the school could get sued, but I wasn't using the balls. I was just looking at them, testing their bounciness.
I moved on to trying to bounce on the balls. I'd seen a few simple tricks that I thought I could do and it wasn't as though I was going to be hurling myself at the balls. Just sitting and bouncing a little. Technically against the rules, but there again, even being in the gym without wearing gym clothes is technically against the rules. I decided to give it a go.
Those stupid balls are a lot harder to balance on than you would think. They're so big that when you get on one your feet aren't on the ground so you have no support. One wrong move and the ball tips you off. Using these could be trickier than I thought.
"You're doing it wrong," said a voice, and I jerked my head around to see who was there. That was a wrong move, by the way. I promptly fell off the ball again.
"You know you're not supposed to use the gym without supervision?" the gym instructor said softly as he strolled over to where I was sitting on the floor.
"Um, I'm not actually using the equipment," I hastily explained. "I was just getting a feel for the balls because I thought we could possibly include them in a couple of our cheerleader routines."
"Ah, my mistake. I thought I saw you sitting on one of the balls but I guess that was my imagination."
He had the blandest look on his face as he looked at me, and I knew my face was red. Still he was letting it go so I didn't say anything.
"Why don't you take the ball and put it against the wall. You'll find the wall will help steady the ball while you sit on it. Once you have a bit of skill you can try the more free form ball exercises."
I did as he suggested, carrying a ball over to the wall and then climbing on it. It was still wobbly but I found that I could sit comfortably and catch my balance. OK, so we would need instructions on how to use the balls. That could be arranged.
"Now try lying on the ball," I was told.
