Epiphany

So I figured out how to quiet my inner turmoil and make Maylene stop pounding on the door (actually, Maylene may still be pounding, but Ayliel's been indulged and strengthened lately):

Physical exertion and competition.

So, in short, I stopped having my mental issues about mid-way through this week. Good thing, too.

Fundamentally Different

Time for a little venting. Girls cannot do everything guys can do in an athletic sense. Girls who argue against that point are ignorant of basic facts. However, there are some things in athletics that guys cannot do as well as girls. This allotment of specialies is the inequality that actually iritates me greatly.

Let us take a trip to practice today. I swam with the top two girls on the team in my lane (we were only three to a lane, because people were missing). Now, I'm not even relay material anymore (the ferret officially beat me out of my last-hope relay spot unless I pull off a miracle). I'm not a top-ranker. I've scored one point in a state meet. A great accomplishment, but nothing extraordinary. Yet I was not only beating top-rank guys in a set, I was doing a faster set. There were guys doing the times I was doing too, but I was beating guys that were higher in the guys' pecking order than I am in the girls' pecking order. This is nothing new. I do it almost every day, and I'm not the only one. Of the two lanes that normally do the sets I do, one is girls and the other is guys. The majority of the girls' lane often beats the majority of the guys' lane.

But when it comes to races, to meets, do the girls even come close? No! I get beat by every stinkin' one of them! The slowest varsity guys can pull off times equal to or better than mine, despite the fact that in practice I can beat some of the guys that make up their relays (not all; I didn't say all). It drives me crazy!

Now, we could blame this on male lethargy and ego, or a hypothetical female inability to compete (though I don't know if either of those, especially the last one, could ever be proven). But scientifically, women are better suited to extended physical exertion. Women are more inclined to endurance than to explosion. This isn't just through observation: the chemical levels prove it too. I can't remember what either chemical is called, but women have more of the endurance chemical and men have more of the sprinting chemical.

I guess that what is meant to be is what is, but that doesn't mean it can't irritate me from time to time.

Disappointment

So, today I not only swam terrible times, but I ruined an almost three-year stint at a goal I made...almost three years ago. Around that time, I made a goal not to punch people anymore. Stop laughing--the goal wasn't to stop hitting people altogether, just no closed-fist, full effort punches (since that's my definition of a punch anyway). Well, I punched someone today. I made at least half the girls' swim team happy while I was at it, but that's only a minor consolation.

Moreover, Ayliel and Maylene are fighting again. This time Maylene has a stronger front; she is fueled by leftover mad cow disease that wasn't dispelled with an antibiotic dose of real life.

All in all, not the most pleasant of days for me.

Sweet Madame Blue

Since I have found myself in possession of time I did not intend to have, and because literary constructions is waiting for blueprints, and even though I should be in bed, I've decided to chronicle an event that was insightful, fun, and altogether satisfying. Of course, as it always is, anything important takes me forever to write.

Today was the Blue & Gold swim meet. For captains, those words spell stress. (I know, us captains can't read very well.) About a week ago, we picked our teams, and my team--BLUE--got stiffed with first pick. See, the system works like this: the first pick chooses one person (guys and girls choose together) and the second pick chooses two. Then we go along, choosing two at a time. Well, long story short, the teams were even in an uneven way; Blue's girls were handicapped when compared to Gold's girls, but Gold's guys were not matched perfectly with Blue's guys. So really, for me, it became a matter of hanging on to enough points to have my guys' team make up the difference. Sounds easy, don't it?

Not so much. I had forgotten to pick a backstroker. Not through sheer stupidity, but through confusion. I thought I had picked one, but my co-captain and I second-guessed for a moment and chose a guy for some reason (it was a good reason, I just can't remember it). So I went the entire time thinking I had a backstroker, all the while leaving a noticeable gap in my lineup. (I had no sprinters either, but I can make people sprint.)

In the end, responsibility for filling the gap fell to me--but I'm not a backstroker. My seed time was six seconds behind the second-slot backstroker (by the way, six seconds is a LOT). Anyway, enough about personal stress; let's move on to the stress that filling up the rest of the team gave me.

Really, the Blue & Gold is an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors. Each captain tries to guess what the other captain will do, thus changing the strategy and fight for points. The Gold girls' captain was scientific about this; she got stats, numbers, times, charts, etc. from the coach's website and other sources. I visited the charts too, and wrote down a few times, but mostly I just thought it out over the course of four or five days. Eventually, I decided that I couldn't guess any better than I already had, and I threw my lineup together in 45-60 minutes. Not too shabby.

The only benefit of the way I did it was that the greyhound, the Gold girl captain, overestimated my intelligence. Of course, I helped her by talking about a supposed "stroke of brilliance" all week, but she should know better than to believe me when I'm trash talking. She thought I would split the fast people up in my relays to ensure second and third place, seeing as I couldn't take first against the fastest relays they could put up. So I won every relay, because she split her relays. Hah. Take that. That's what you get for out-thinking me on the fly, I.M., and 200 free.

Ultimately, I had my lineup set and there was nothing I could do about it but motivate people. Unfortunately, my best manner of motivation--yelling--doesn't always work on peers. I had to be NUTURING. Can you say "shoot me"? Before the first three events were through, I had two people stop in the middle of races. I had both of them telling me I was terrible for asking them to do the things I did. One of them, I might add, was doing the exact same events she does every stinking meet, but I still got crap about it. The other just wouldn't listen...to me, anyway. Eventually she finished the race, but she continually asked me to scratch her out of her second event. Hello! I can't do that! I only have twelve girls to work with! I need the events filled, hun! But saying that would have been mean. So I had to nuture. I growled to myself a couple of times.

But all was not lost, for others stepped up where I hadn't expected them to. There are twin freshman on the team, and I chose one over the other because--looking at the numbers--she does well under pressure. In the 500 yard freestyle, the longest race we swim in high school, these JV swimmers managed to finish within a tenth of a second of each other. But the one on my team came out on top in spite of nearly missing her last wall. I was so happy! You have no idea.

The meet wore on, times were placed, points scored, key DQs pronounced, I dropped two seconds on my backstroke time and forced the girl next to me to match her Region time, and in the end...well, let's look back on history.

I have never been on a winning team in the B&G. Never ever.

BUT I WAS TODAY! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The Gold team had to serve us dinner tonight, because they LOST! Hah! Spaghetti never tasted so good. Delish.

My moral of the story: I'll never get mad at Dan about a meet's setup again, and I'll always try to do what he's asking me to do. Also, never underestimate your opponent, or your allies.

Though I guess the greyhound's moral would be: Don't overestimate people who don't like to do research.

It's All Relative

So, during Drama 1 last class period, three of my friends and I were critiqued, and each received very specific recommendations. One's actions appeared unnatural, another's voice was too mellow, one spoke sideways, and I had difficulties putting up the appearance of a nuturing mother. The most hilarious part about all of it was that everything mentioned was completely natural for each person. For example, when my children come crying to me, I will be the mother who says, "Suck it up, child! Deal with it!" Later, at swim practice, I drew an interesting parallel from acting to writing. My problems with my character come from her, Mother, being portrayed simply as me talking. She isn't herself; she's me in a disguise. It's just like writing. My characters don't become real to the reader until they stop being my voice in disguise. When characters become themselves, and begin to behave on their own, is when art happens.

I had another enlightening thought that had to do with relating one thing to another thing, but I lost it while I wrote this. Goodbye, thought.

At Last! An Idea!

Adapted from a writer's headstone: At last, a plot!

Anyway, I finally found a topic for one of our English essays that is personal, but not so personal that it's going to kill me to write it or share it! It's far removed from the present time, though effects are still present, it didn't have any heartbreaking effects, and it's actually pretty hysterical in retrospect. I thought it was funny then, too. I love having a thick skin.

Oh, you want to know the idea? Yeah, for the "write a narrative about a time when you were an outsider, isolated because of social, intellectual, or ethnic differences between you and others" question, I'm writing about being the only girl who played kickball in elementary school. Score for freewriting. That wasn't what I was planning on doing at all, but it kicks my other idea's trash.