Shop and Drop

Earlier this week, I spent a day helping my friend Meg, who is a gymnastics coach, with the holiday “Shop and Drop” at her gym. If you are wondering what exactly that is, then you are not alone. After agreeing a few weeks ago to assist, it only occurred to me the night before that I had no idea what precisely was entailed. Of particular concern to me, as someone who has not entered a gymnastics facility in a good fifteen years, was the “and drop” portion of the title. What did that mean exactly?

Well, it turns out it is a day of camp basically. Since schools are on break for the holidays, parents could “drop” their kids off for a full or a half day and then spend these precious purchased child-free hours enjoying a Christmas “shop,” going to work, or doing whatever it is parents do when they manage to pass off their darling little doppelgangers into the capable (gullible?) hands of adults other than them.

Bust out the champagne and dance around the house naked to 80’s tunes is my guess.
But I could be wrong.

So both the “Shop” and the “Drop” components did not actually pertain to me. Unless you count when I accidentally dropped a six year old boy when he hurled himself off the balance beam into my body. Note I did not say, “He hurled himself into my outstretched arms.” I did not say that because my arms were not, in fact outstretched. It is a cruel and unusual thing to be standing innocently enough one minute, and then to be suddenly tackled to the ground by a 50 pound human cannon ball the next.

One word for you people: helmets. Not just for bike-riders or unruly toddlers.

The entire day was interesting not only because I came to the astute conclusion that six year old boys are a frighteningly rambunctious breed of little creatures, but for a whole host of other reasons as well. Perhaps it is unsurprising that a general hullabaloo ensues naturally when you take a large padded room filled with enticing equipment and bouncy apparatus and add a group of four to 11 year-olds. Adding to the fun was that this was not a “typical class,” one where all the kids would roughly be at the same level. Instead there were was a fairly wide range of age and abilities, all working together. Not necessarily a recipe for safety or kindness on all fronts, but it worked out well enough.

Generally speaking, they were great kids, and I had a fun time.

Suffice it to say, the day also acted as fairly potent birth control. It is a possibility that I came home and proclaimed to my dogs (who are, incidentally, decidedly LESS unruly than six year old boys): “Holy blue Jesums, we will never have a child in this house, ever!” And then I turned on Air Supply and danced around in my underwear with a bottle of Moet and Chandon.

But that is neither here nor there.

What I did realize, and this realization is the impetus for this posting, is that there is much to be learned from kids about honesty, about self-awareness, and about living in the moment.

There was one little girl, a five year old named Ruby, who was a very sweet and very chubby little character. Ruby was part of the first group I had on the balance beam. She had particular trepidation about traversing the beam, and it was written all across her chubby little cheeks as she watched in awe as another girl sailed right across. When it came to be Ruby’s turn, I expected some sort of negotiation to take place between us, and I anticipated, based on the look of fear I had seen, that getting her to walk across the beam would be no small feat.

Well, she surprised me. Before I said anything to her, she quietly and determinedly stated, “Miss Maggie, I am scared to go across, but I would like to try.”

There is nothing quite as endearing as a chubby little kid in pigtails who inspires a grown woman by her willingness to confront a fear. No risk, no reward, Miss Ruby. You are now my hero.

So, she went across the first couple of times on the lower beams, holding my hand. Rather than jumping off the end, I would lift her to the ground. Note here, that she did not feel the inexplicable impulse felt by that cannonball/boy to throw herself at me. Not to exercise blatant bias towards my gender or anything, but I suspect the fact that she was female had something to do with her polite awareness regarding the safety of both herself and others.

By the end of the 30 minutes Ruby was boldly traversing the highest of the beams by herself. On her last turn, she jumped off the end without my assistance. She high-fived me with gusto and asked, “What do we try next?”

In sum: she started out terrified, she confronted her fear, she conquered her fear, and she was ready for more. Did I mention that Ruby is my new hero?

It was lovely to see how she was obviously, and deservedly, proud of her accomplishments.

So proud in fact, that when I told her she could go have a drink of water and a rest on the mats for all her hard work, she ran over to her cubby and pulled an enormous sandwich out of her lunch pail. She sat down and started polishing it off in a sort of gleeful celebratory feast. The fact that it was only 10 am did not seem like a deterrent for this feast of accomplishment.

At the end of the day we were doing tumbling with the small number of children who had stayed past lunchtime (by this I mean the regular lunchtime of noon, not the Ruby lunchtime of 10 am). Ruby was one of the remaining, as was her brother. We were working on somersaults, cartwheels and backbends. At one point, her brother, who was two years older than she, was avidly watching another boy contort himself in a backbend. Her brother, who was new to gymnastics, took on a look of fear (seems to run in that family, that look). He announced decisively, though not rudely: “I do not want to do that. I will not do that. I will sit out now.”

Let me insert here that I am amazed by the fact that these two children could state their feelings so simply and truthfully, without allowing emotions or the anticipation of the reactions they will elicit to color what they say, or how they say it. It is so refreshing and simple, and yet I am hard-pressed to think of many adults who can do so on a regular basis.

After her brother’s declaration, Ruby patted him on the shoulder and said emphatically: “No! You have to try.” She added, “Mom told us that we should try everything they ask us to try, even if we have never done it before, and even if it is hard. She said to ask the people for help, and we might like the new stuff.”

I guess by “the people” she meant Meg, me, and the other coaches in the gym, and I found this reference funny. But I also love how she re-phrased or paraphrased their mother’s words. I love how she actually took the advice to heart with the whole balance beam experience and it worked out wonderfully for her.

Where I am going with this point is likely obvious: what if we all took each day and tried all that we were asked to try, even if it was unfamiliar, and even if it looked hard? What if we all recognized that we could always ask “the people” around us for help?

I bet we would find, as Ruby did, that we just might like the new stuff. We just might find we have skills we never realized we had. We just might find ourselves joyously chowing down lunch at a weirdly early hour in celebration.

Or, to take another path demonstrated today, we just might find ourselves hurling ourselves off of gym apparatus’ at unsuspecting bystanders.

And on that note, I have to share that Ruby, ever the sage little cherub, followed up her words to her brother with a disclaimer: “Well try it but if it looks very dangerous, just say no.”

So true. Or at least wear a helmet.