When I was in elementary school, I took dance classes.  I must have taken them for five or six years before I decided to drop them.  I can remember standing in front of the wall-to-floor mirror in the studio in my black leotard and tights (it was a jazz class.)  I had begun to develop earlier than most of my classmates, drawing taunts and sidewise glances from every corner.

(I guess now would be a good time to mention that I, like many other people, hear comments that are meant to be asides, but unlike many other people, I remember them.  So I clearly remember being measured for a costume one day and my hips being measured at 40 inches.  Forty inches? whispered another girl, whose slender prepubescent hips seemed to mock mine.)

I quit dance just in time for P.E. classes in middle school, which were another form of torture.  I dreaded being pushed out on the court and field.  The only thing I excelled at was weight lifting – I could bench more weight than any other girl in my class (70 pounds!)  The pretty, popular girls were the ones who could play with the boys, the ones who joined the cheer squad, the ones who weren’t afraid to wear Spankies and shorts.

(Later on in high school I assisted the middle school volleyball team despite having little experience in volleyball.  I was demonstrating a serve one day when the coach decided to work on my technique, and, exasperated, said something along the lines of “You’ve got those big hips, now use them!”  I quit the job.)

As I began high school, I had pretty much resigned myself to my fate.  I did well in school, despite having few friends, and I thought I was content to reign supreme in academics.  Until my dad begged me to join a sport.  You lead a sedentary life, he said.  It was true.  I didn’t walk or ride a bike.  I had no interest in my dad’s active lifestyle.  I preferred to stay home on the Internet, but his words conjured up an image of a 300-pound Amber being ostracized in her freshman year of college, so I agreed to join a varsity team.

Since the only sport I even remotely knew how to play was basketball, that’s what I joined.

The other girls who came to tryouts had all had experience in elementary and middle school.  They wore basketball shorts and slim-cut T-shirts, while I had come to tryouts in a yoga shirt and my school uniform skort.  I felt hopelessly depressed and idiotic.

I collapsed during my first set of suicides.  I lay there trying to convince my lungs to keep working while the coaches fussed over me and the other girls, I was sure, gossiped about my soft and unathletic physique.  That’s it, I thought.  I have failed tryouts and now I am destined for a life of sadness and pain.  

But I made it onto the team, because it was a small school and they needed people on the bench.  So I returned to that gym on Thursday, and every Monday and Thursday after that.

I can’t remember what we were doing when it happened.  It was some sort of drill, perhaps passing or lay-ups or whatnot, and I, as usual, was the worst out of all the girls.  We formed two lines waiting for our turn, and as I set off on my run, I clearly heard the girl behind me say to her friend, “She’s so bad.”

I had two options at that time: to admit that the girl was right and to quit the team forever, or to take horrific, savage umbrage at her remark and do everything in my power to prove her wrong.  For the first time in my life, I chose the second option.

The next three seasons were full of triumph and pain.  I got my first black eye.  I scored six points against the top-ranking team in the league.  I fell in love with a young man from the local Jewish high school, and when he unwisely discarded my affections I took great pleasure in fouling the girls on their basketball team.  One year we ranked fourth in the league.  I traveled to the ghetto and the res’ and the most exclusive neighborhoods in Scottsdale, gradually gaining confidence (and losing a little bit of weight, which wasn’t a bad thing either.)

Basketball was the first thing I had come across in which I was not automatically the best. Now that I am at Rice, there are many other things which I have not mastered and probably never will master.  But thanks to that one annoying girl who happened to be in line behind me, every time I see people pity me for my poor chemistry grade or hear someone invite everyone else in the room except me out for dinner, I only smile.  I invite myself out to dinner.  I throw myself on that chemistry so that no one might ever have cause to pity me again.

You see, in the grand scheme of things, you only have two options: to admit that you are not the best and give up, or to fight your way, tooth and claw, onward.

I am eternally glad that I chose the second option.