The Sunday Memory Drawer - The Forward Roll

This is that time-honored athletic feat, the forward roll. Also known as the somersault. Trust me when I tell you that is not me in the picture. Because I have done one of these things just once in my life when I was about eight years old. And never again.

It was during my ill-fated attempt at attending a summer day camp. The Boys Club-sponsored Camp Mohawk. I was supposed to be there all summer, but I lasted just two weeks. What was supposed to be a field trip or some great activity every day turned out to be perhaps one bus trip and nothing but a daily eight-hour-long gym class. And, on one disastrous day, there were gymnastics. Rings, the ropes, and the balance beam. To me, all crap that is better left in the backyards of China.

But, it all started with the basics. We were to learn the proper way to do a forward roll. You know. You squat into a crouch. Lock your arms around you for support, tuck your head, and over.

Except I was afraid of it. A fear of being upside down, which also means I have no future as a pineapple-adorned cake. When it was my turn to crouch, tuck, and roll, I pretty much locked into position and wouldn't move. There was no way I was going to do this. The psychopath who doubled as our loving camp counselor wanted no part of my obstinance. He grabbed my feet and flung me over. I thought my neck was broken and did what any eight-year-old would do. I cried. Now, if this had happened in today's litigious society, this chowderhead would have been fired by the end of the day. But, back then, when I got home and told my parents about the inhumane treatment I had received from Attila the Hun, I got a non-reaction. And the usual command.

"Can you run to the grocery store? We're out of pickled beets."

With my back seemingly broken, there was no way I was going to run anywhere, regardless of our dire need for vacuum packed vegetables.

Of course, this forward roll phobia was now ingrained. And was reactivated every school year when our gym class moved to the mats every winter. So as not to repeat the torturous day camp scenario, I would concoct a plethora of ailments to get the much-craved gym excuse. Knowing approximately when gymnastics would be done in class, I systematically began to walk with a sprained ankle several weeks before. I treated the nurses' office as if it were my own condo and even got to the point where the lady was going to adopt me.

My parents decided that you conquer fear by meeting it head on. One school year, they made it their personal mission to get me to roll forward. My mother demonstrated it, probably with a cigarette in her mouth. My father showed me several times, perhaps as a result of one too many Schaefers at the local gin mill. And then out came the piece de resistance. The deal closer.

Grandma.

She told me that, if she could do one, so could I. And, then she promised that seeing would be believing. Out into the hall she went with every single cushion from every sofa and chair in the house. Laid out from wall to wall, Grandma had constructed her own Gold's gym. And, in lickity split fashion, she bent down, tucked her head, and rolled over. Only once. That was probably all her 70-plus years could muster. I was impressed. I was nonplussed. I was ashamed for making such a fuss all these years.

And, the very next week, I got my annual medical excuse for gym class.

I was happy to know that so many people in my family were so ahtletically gifted. As for me, I would simply write about it years later.

Dinner last night: Bacon burger at Pig N' Whistle.