Horror of Sports
My young nephew started boarding school last week and all of us were excited and anxious for him all at the same time. I remembered my first week at boarding school and all the new experiences to take in, the main one being that this was not home and I had to learn to adapt to living with hundreds of other girls who were all in the same boat as me.
One of the other difficult things I had to get used to was playing sport. We’re not a sporty family and in Chinese tradition, there is a veneration for “scholars” - ie “swots” to the Brits - and much less respect given to sporty types who are considered “all brawn and no brain”. So my siblings and I were never encouraged to play sports when we were in primary school in Malaysia. We all wore glasses at an early age and read lots of books. At P.E. time, my swotty friends and I would stand around on the sidelines while the other girls did star jumps etc and the teacher never tried very hard to make us join in.
So imagine my horror at being thrown out into the autumn afternoons in my first term at school in England to go and play lacrosse. The air to my tropical skin was icy. Sometimes it was grey and drizzling and in such conditions in Malaysia, we would stay indoors
or be sure we had a brolly with us. But while I hesitated on the doorstep, the other girls would pound out into the damp - and the sports mistress would hurry me along with words to the effect of: “A little bit of rain never hurt anyone”.
Lacrosse - or “lax” as the girls called it - was originally a Native-American sport. You can see a game of it in the Daniel Day-Lewis film “The Last of the Mohicans” - and it was pretty brutal, I recall. A History of Native American Lacrosse states rather ominously, “In the past, lacrosse also served to vent aggression, and territorial disputes between tribes were sometimes settled with a game, although not always amicably.” In photos of the modern American version of the game, the players wear body armour, as you can see on the right.
But we’re talking here about a British gals’ boarding school. Mention safety and body armour and you’re likely to get the response: “Stuff and nonsense, don’t be so namby-pamby - like those Americans”.
So there I was, much tinier and scrawnier than many of the solid, broad-shouldered Anglo-Saxon gals who had been brought up all their lives on brisk walks, fresh air and a belief that exercise and sport were good for you - for your health and your character. They all seemed to cradle the lax stick with natural athleticism and be able to run across the huge, enormous, vast, ginormous tracts of land that was the playing field without breaking into a paroxysm of gasping and panting and coughing. The ball is small but very heavy and yet, they could throw and catch it with the lax stick deftly and with control. My ball always just plopped onto the ground a few feet away from me - and I was terrified whenever I had to catch it ungainfully with my outstretched stick in case I missed and it hit me on the head.
But the most horrifying moment was when we were actually playing a game and I had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and the ball landed in my lax stick. The gals from the other team would all come bearing down on me, thundering like a herd of bison, mud kicking up in clumps. My team-mates would be calling to me to pass them the ball or to run into an opening but invariably, I’d scamper about rather ineffectually or just plain freeze.
Now, the thing about lax is that it all happens around the level of your head. You cradle the lax stick upright, the netty bit holding the ball switching back and forth in front of your face as you run. If someone is trying to get the ball off you, they whack your stick with theirs to knock the ball out. You’re supposed to body block them, twisting the stick away from attack.
So imagine a herd of thundering bison storming down at you brandishing lax sticks as if about to swipe your head off.
It just seemed so much easier to give the ball to them - like what you’re supposed to do if you’re ever mugged. Just give them the wallet or the money. Or the ball. So I’d make a pathetic attempt to throw the ball - not a proper pass to one of my team-mates but more a “here, take it, I don’t want it” kind of a gesture.
And off they would thunder, scrumming after the ball, trying to pick it up from the mud or tackling another braver gal, cracking and whacking at each other’s sticks. And I’d be left alone. Relieved and alive.
These days I’m a little bit more robust and a little bit more sporty. I go for runs. I even run in the rain. I’ve turned British, after all. But whenever there’s a team sport - like at various law firms where I’ve worked, some bright spark rustles up a game of football or rounders with another law firm or a client - my heart sinks and my stomach turns itself into knots. OK, it’s not lax or anything terrifying they’re proposing but the trauma and humiliation of team lacross and letting my team-mates down has scarred me for life!
Photos: thanks to devilblink via flickr.com and sportcamp101.com
- Posted on
Fri, September 14th, 2007 - Author
Yang-May Ooi - Category
- 9 responses
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September 19th, 2007 at 5:04 am
I am a Japanese woman and even for a Japanese I am short. I can understand your horror whic traumatized you, although I have not experience playing lacross. I think this physical difference between Anglos-Sazons and Asians can also affect attitudes toward each other.
I’ve lived abroad all together around 11years and to be honest it is not pleasant sometimes.
There was an occasion that I played tennis with Germans, they were so tall, it was like having a wall in front playing doubles with them. No offense but I sometimes wish that I was taller and do not have to be always look down to.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Naho, I know what you mean about wishing to be a bit taller sometimes - especially in the cinema or theatre in the West: invariably, the tallest person in the auditorium sits in front of me… As for being “looked down on”, perhaps the trick is to cultivate such an air of authority that people look up to us metaphorically, if not literally!
September 21st, 2007 at 12:24 pm
My son who is 10 comes home crying from school after rugby games. He cannot understand why his fellow students are allowed to, no, encouraged and ordered to tackle and physiclally hurt each other. One day he came home with a tooth shook loose, his legs and neck hurting.
What i find quite interesting is that the qualities in children that are praised in south east asia (quietness, swottiness dilgence, etc) are not necessarily the ones that seen to be most desirable here.
An English teacher expressed surprise when a friend’s daughter won the Science comptetion, because she was “so quiet, and doesn’t put her hand up in class”
When you straddle two worlds it is easy to fall into the cracks
September 21st, 2007 at 3:33 pm
P Kang - your poor little boy! What an awful experience for him. But I suppose some people might consider that “character forming”??!!
That’s a good phrase “When you straddle two worlds it is easy to fall into the cracks” - thanks for sharing that!
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:48 am
I guess when you say ” ,,,,,easy to fall into the cracks” it has the same meaning of growing up in a different country other then your own. David Pollock,in his book ‘Third Cultural Kids’ describes so well about the pain and joy of it. So instead of falling into the cracks I would like to think that I have a culture of my own which is very unique. I lived in New York when I was 4to 9 years old and that experience changed me to be in the cracks forever, but there are many friends in that crack which we connect in one second once we meet.
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Hi Naho - it’s quite true that “third culture” people have a culture of their own. I find that I have many friends who are from different nationalities and cultures, living in a place that is non-native to them. The thing that we all have in common is being not from the culture we are living in, whether we are living in France, UK, Australia, US, Malaysia or anywhere else.
September 30th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Falling into the cracks can be a good thing, or a bad thing. I’ve lived away from “home” or where i was born now for more years than i’ve lived there. Yet the pull is still there: mostly for the food, the char kway teow, the mee saims, the mee pok, etc, family and old friends, and also the shared jokes, the short cuts to conversations, etc.
I suppose Yang-May ooi and i choose (for whatever reasons) to live outside our own cultures, and that in some ways gives us lots of freedom. But I suspect (for me, anyway) that it is sometimes lonely, and gets lonelier the older i grow.
I didn’t think about it so much when i was a teenager, but the older i grow, the more i long to be with people i know. Yet, like the good expat i am, i am quick at making instant friends, and find pockets of people that i can connect with. Also i am aware once i go home, i am impatient to be away after a few weeks.
So as in that Joan Armatrading song, “East or West..where’s the best…?”
And yes, you’re right. We “third culture” people have other friends do seek out others like ourselves.
Oops. have to go cook supper for my boys!
October 10th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Interesting what you say about getting lonelier as you get older in your adoptive country. I’ve noticed that among my elder relatives who migrated to Western culture after they started working but as they’ve got older feel more Eastern. As yet, I haven’t felt that in my own life - perhaps because I’ve been fortunate enough to have a network of good friends and neighbours, both real and virtual. Or perhaps I’m not yet THAT old….!
October 11th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
YM,’oldie’ term best reserved for old geezers like me who can remember pre-merdeka days.
Given the benefits of the digital age that we live in, I’d have thought it’s less likely for one to get lonely or lonesome.
Two guys I know have retired back to Malaysia and both got themselves new young brides as well [but nothing like the age disparity in the Anna Nichol Smith marital case, 26/87 incidentally], one tells me given the strength of GBP to the ringgit, he lives ‘like a king’ and has never been happier.