God Drives a Tow Truck (5 page)

While I hope Wendy is squirming as she remembers her taunts, they were not unfounded. To this day, I cannot clap in rhythm and sing. I can do one or the other, but not both simultaneously. After hours of practice, I mastered rubbing my stomach and patting my head at the same time, but that was only when Wendy told me I couldn’t even do that. She was right, but I was determined to prove her wrong. So perhaps Wendy did me a favor with her endless taunts. I would become a Tigerette, or die trying. She smirked when I told her my plans.

When I showed up for practice, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle. The burgeoning class room of Tigerette wannabees was filled with girls from the gymnastics team, dance classes, and cheerleaders. Every girl had long legs and long blond hair. They were in various poses of impossible flexibility, as they warmed up. Not only did I lack one particle of talent, experience, or grace, but I was cursed with very tight joints. I could not even touch my toes. Nonetheless, I forced myself to remain. I tried not to notice the girls looking my way, whispering to each other behind hands shielding their mouths.

The dance teacher entered the room and surveyed the mass of beautiful girls…. and me.

“Ladies, as you know, only twenty of you will be chosen. We will learn the routine tonight and I will choose the team next week. You will have one week to practice.”

One week. I had one week to try to touch my toes, and do it with grace.

The dance instructor stood in front of the sea of lovely ladies, and then demonstrated the routine. Some of the girls were mastering it even as they watched it for the first time. Half the squad from last year was also there, trying out again for the team. That meant that in reality, only about ten spots remained. I was lost, completely unable to even do the first most simple move. I struggled to follow as the instructor broke the dance down into simple steps. The first day of practice ended, and I knew I did not have a prayer of learning the routine, let alone making the team. In fact, I found it difficult to walk to the door after the hour of practice. I shuffled painfully out as the blond beauties exited before me. Wendy had been right.

However, I have never been a quitter. What I lack in talent, I make up in determination. I would see it through to its humiliating conclusion. Each afternoon, after school I returned to the classroom for the practice session. I noticed the room was a little less crowded each night, but there were still far more girls than available slots on the team. I slowly did manage to learn the routine, all except for one part. I could not master the ‘strutting’ walk. I kept jamming my toes into the ground, thrusting my chest forward thinking I was doing the swaggering step correctly, but the teacher repeatedly told me it was wrong. She spent far more time trying to help me than with everyone else combined. No one else struggled with that simple step. No one. I alone could not get it.

“Good try,” said the teacher, “But lead with your hips. No…not like that. Here, watch me. See how simple? Relax and try again.”
“Like this?”
The blond beauties’ hands went up again, not fully masking the giggles as they watched me.

“Practice over,” snapped the teacher, glaring at the bevy of blondes, “If anyone wants to stay for extra help, I will stay as long as you want to.”
The rest of the class filed out. I waited until they were all gone.

“Will you help me?” I asked.

“I will try,” said the teacher, a skeptical look on her face.

I stayed late every day, after everyone else had left, and the teacher coached me over and over again. She tried not to wince, or let her face reveal the hopelessness of her task. Despite an hour of extra practice each day, she could not eradicate the klutz that I knew was permanently imbedded in my body. What irked me more than my inability to learn was the defection of some of the girls who had supposedly been my friends. As the week of practice continued to expose my flaws, my friends stopped talking to me. They could not risk being seen by the side of this bumbling, inept, and embarrassing person. One or two people who were among the most secure and talented of the group were still kind to me, and even tried to help. Mary, one of the very best, would take time to tell me I seemed to be getting the idea of the strut, though I know that was not really the case. But to most, I was a pariah, with the possibly communicable condition of a blundering dolt.

The day of tryouts finally arrived. We all knew which twenty girls would be chosen. It was clear. By and large, they were members of the gymnastics team, or returning Tigerettes. One by one we filed in front of the teacher, and performed the routine. When my turn came, I could barely breathe I was so frightened. I bravely smiled, and then mustered my best. I was not surprised to be unable to strut properly through the section I had never mastered. I sprained a groin muscle slightly, kicking my leg higher than it had ever gone during the kick routine, but managed not to yelp until I was out of earshot of the instructor. I didn’t miss anything obvious, other than the rhythm and fluid grace that was called for. I had done what I had set out to do, however. I completed the entire routine, and smiled with genuine satisfaction as I did the final move. I had made it through the tryouts for the Tigerettes. It was over. A few girls snickered. The tryouts ended and I went home, where I applied icepacks to my thigh muscles.

The next day the results were to be posted by the end of the school day, outside the practice room. I lingered in the back of the mob, but did not push forward until the others were all gone. I didn’t want it to appear like I thought I had a chance. After many minutes, the crowd of blond beauties dissipated, and I glanced around. In the empty hallway, I shyly approached the list and ran my finger down the row of twenty names. My finger stopped. I must have the wrong list. This must be the posting of rejected klutzes because there was no possible way my name could be on the list of Tigerettes, the Rockettes of the Gridiron.

But I was not mistaken. I was chosen. I was a Tigerette. We were to gather the following day for our first practice and for the determination of front line/rear line positions. I sat on the end of the row of seats. The blonds were lumped together. Mary smiled as she went by, and said, “Congratulations.” I smiled gratefully back at her.

There were two lines of Tigerettes; the front line of ten, who were the best, and the back line, who were less showy, less accomplished. The front line could be challenged by anyone in the back line each week, and the two would then perform the routine before the coach. She would choose the better girl, and the winner obtained the coveted front line position. I could not believe it when the list of front line Tigerettes was read out loud to the new team. I was in the front line! There were some angry murmurings, but I smiled from my seat, alone at the end of the row.

Every single week for all the years I was a Tigerette, I was challenged by a back line member. I only lost the challenge once. For one football game halftime show, I was put in the back line. The next week, I was returned to the front line. I was the only front line Tigerette that was ever challenged. Every day, I worked hours and hours to master the routine that took the other girls minutes to conquer. I stayed after school countless times, and the dance teacher worked with me patiently. Even I was wondering why she kept me in the front line. I would love to report that it was because I was better than the back line, but I knew I was not. All the girls knew I was not.

Years later, a friend told me he had actually talked with the dance teacher about me. Why was Vicky, clearly less talented than the others, always in the front line? Why was she a Tigerette in the first place? The teacher told him it was because no one worked harder, and no one smiled with more delight through every practice and every halftime show.

“Her joy is so infectious,” the dance teacher told my friend.

I have told the Tigerette story to all my children. I wanted them to know that God does not give gifts equally. Life is not fair, and none of us will be able to succeed at everything we wish we could do. However, my experience as a Tigerette taught me a Bible truth that many years later I would learn, and nestle around when the cold hard disappointments of life threatened to engulf me. We may be handed unequal talents, and unequal circumstances, but we are all beloved by our Creator. Sometimes just hanging on, with every slipping fingernail digging in, is the best you can do. And if you can do it with a smile, heaven itself might peek through the clouds. God is always near the broken hearted, the weak, and the helpless. I may not have yet acknowledged His existence, but He was even then showing me that all things are possible with God. Grace is extended even to a klutz.

Chapter Seven

Spandex and Fathers Don’t Mix

^{Proverbs 30: 17}

¹⁷
“The eye that mocks a father,
   that scorns an aged mother,
will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley,
   will be eaten by the vultures.

It is not every large man that can get away with black and yellow spandex bicycle tights. As if adolescence was not humiliating in and of itself, I had to endure the sight of my father, in spandex. Like a giant wasp, he boarded his state of the art 18 speed bicycle, and zipped all over my hometown in his spandex tights. Spandex on my father, even in tasteful black, would have been enough to make me bury my head in the sand, but bright yellow and black banded spandex on a rotund father was more than anyone should be expected to bear.

It is interesting that what mortifies us most about our parents in our youth, are often the things we look back upon with fondness, even admiration. (Now, I mortify my own children, having had a role model exemplar. To their eternal dismay, I never got over the belly pack fashion rage. In fact, I own several models. I even own a “dress velvet” belly pack for special occasions. However, that is for their own book to write. )

I would dismally stand at the window each weekend, watching my spandexed father pedal off. I’d pray that all the people I knew were very busy, deep in the bowels of their homes, far away from windows. Inevitably, on Monday as we walked to classes, someone would smirk and mention they had seen my dad bicycling that weekend. I would blush like a stop light. Why could I not be like the other kids, who had
normal
dads; dads that didn’t dress up like vampires for Halloween, or yodel at the top of their lungs at the football games, or ride about town in bright yellow spandex? Why me? Why was the painfully shy child given a father
like that
?

Despite shrinking from the overly conspicuous presence that was my father, I was grateful for the activities we mutually adored. I loved the old musicals just as much as he did, and revered Gene Kelly maybe more than he did! We stayed up late together, watching the old movies while singing along. On our Sunday family drives, searching for adventure and new restaurants, he and I would belt out
The Sound of Music
, or
Edelweiss
while the rest of the family rolled their eyes. Dad had a booming and magnificent voice that had almost, just almost, made it into professional opera.

Much as I wished I could melt away at the sight of his spandex, I loved bike riding as much as he did. I pretended my bike was a horse, and I would disappear for hours, lost in the wonder of wind whipping through my hair. On my bicycle horse, I reveled in the beauty of the farms and pastures in the mauve hills surrounding our home.

So when Dad asked me to join him on a Century (100 mile) bike ride with his cycling group, along the Susquehanna River, I didn’t even ask him if he intended to wear the bee suit spandex. I swallowed my concerns, and told him, “I would love to! That sounds fun.” He smiled, and rubbed his hands together as he scurried off to plan our great adventure.

We would gather with the other Southern Tier Bicycle Club riders early in the morning. Elite cyclists can certainly do one hundred miles in well under five hours, but Dad and I were hardly elite. Part, if not most, of the joy for Dad with long distance bicycling, was the number of calories we could safely consume. Biking a hundred miles insured we would pass a large number of restaurants. He excitedly looked over our route, pointing out our breakfast, lunch, and dinner spots, as well as the mid-morning, midday, and mid-mid day snack stops. He intended to ride for twelve hours, and adjust his speed accordingly, as that would then encompass a full day of meals. Incidentally, that would qualify us for the coveted Century Patch, as well. Of course, characteristically, he provided me with a color coded map with the route carefully plotted and the varying food stops highlighted.