This Blog Entry is AWESOME! Good Job Brianna!

In my impressionable formative years my aunt Karen took me to a play that was... I think... about adults being really boring and probably something about love being complicated but that was mostly ok because being SUPER INTO theatre was how I was currently defining my entire personality and the play took place in a car on the stage. A real live car! Just like the ones I saw on the street everyday! CRAZY. Anyway, short of the car and the general theme of love/heartache/divorce the only thing I really remember about the play was a speech given by one of the characters (the dude, I think) about how he was a great cheerleader and he loved cheering people on and how that was really hard to do when the cheer receiver was constantly going on about how much they suck. This struck me as very profound at age 15ish and may have even spared my mother a few long whiny bouts of "woe is me no one wants to take me to prom because I am the ugliest duckling to ever waddle" (though she'll certainly be shocked to hear that there could have been EVEN MORE such outbursts). This post is not about love or cars or my adolescence (well, no more so than everything I've ever written is about my adolescence), it's about cheerleading. Sort of.

Like the lovelorn boy in that play, I am an awesome cheerleader -- not the most awesome, that title likely belongs to Gillian who I’m pretty sure once did a cartwheel when I won Settlers -- but I got a lot of rah rahs in my sis-boom-ba if you know what I mean (ew. no.). In high school almost all of my close girlfriends were actual cheerleaders of the pep rallies, booty shaking and sleeping with the football team variety but I was too busy with math team and the angst to get into a pleated skirt and tennis shoes. But today I find myself often the cheerleader at parties, at family events, hell, even Project management is at least 30% cheering people on (“two, four, six, eight your code is really great!”).

Thursday night was my team’s final dodgeball game because despite not sucking quite as much as I had anticipated (I think we're 3rd to the last otherwise known as SIXTH PLACE!) we still will not be attending anything like a playoff game... unless they start giving prizes for cheering. The nerds kick ass at cheering! A childhood of being picked last has left all of us sensitive and supportive to a fault -- all of our games are decorated with shrieks of "You are doing so good!" "Awesome job!" "Eeeeeeeeeeeek!" and "Hey guys! Don’t suck!" By our 2^nd or 3^rd game the Zogsports’ designated ref had taken to slowly telling us the score while backing out of decibel range because regardless of just how dismal the final results his announcement would be followed by the kind of hooting and hollering last heard at a moonshine fueled hoedown. Never has “You guys lost 16 to 4.” Been greeted with such enthusiasm! Cause seriously dudes that means we got FOUR WHOLE POINTS.

Over the past couple of months my personal dodgeball playing has shown noticeable improvement moving up from laughable to pitying. When the season began I was a one skill player – all dodging all the time. I couldn’t throw without resulting in a subsequent catch (and subsequent out, followed by “Good Job Bri! It’s Ok!!”) and I didn’t dare even try to catch. But boy oh boy could I run away from a ball and since dodging is, literally, the name of the game I considered myself a team asset anyway. But on the second to last game I managed to up my ball delivery from “toss” to a tightly wound up pitch that on occasion even got an opponent out. And on the last game through some miracle I caught THREE balls! There was much cheering – even from the ref and the other team! The key to succeeding at sports is to set the bar as low as possible so everything short of killing yourself is seen as a celebration worthy success.

Kickball starts in 2 weeks and I suspect I am not more gifted at kicking than throwing but I may need to invest in a pair of pompoms.