yes, when i was in the ninth grade, i made the football team. but i would have never gone to tryouts if i thought i'd make the team and then i quit without playing a game. i was not in the starting lineup.

the problem is that i had a jock father. he played all of the sports in high school, so he naturally thought i'd want to. not so. at all. i thought sports were a stupid, boring waste of time and i hated competing and i hated competitive people. he also thought it would "boost my self esteem", which is what he thought was "wrong with me", rather than realizing i was just a girl and just wasn't interested in competition.

he basically ordered me to try out for the football team and when i told him i wasn't really interested in it he told me it was for my own good.

i took the path of least resistance. i reasoned there was no actual likelihood of making the team anyways, so it would be in my self-interest to get cut to prove the point. unfortunately, i kept going and i repeatedly didn't get cut. ottawa had a deficit of schools in the suburbs at the time, so they had to ship us into town, and he would consequently pick me up on his way home from work. i caught him talking to the coach once or twice when i was off elsewhere, and i think he actually talked him into it.

this was a frustrating situation for me. it mattered less when the tryouts and practices were after school and i was willing to humour him so long as it didn't affect my school work, and on the presumption that i'd get cut anyways. but, when i found myself on the team, i was all of a sudden expected to miss math and science classes (something important) to play football games (something stupid), which i didn't realize was going to be the case (i was in grade 9. i didn't care about football. i didn't know the games were during the school day. why do they do that? it's terrible.) and which i decided was idiotic. i wasn't going to be one of the dumb kids that skipped math class to play sports. i was embarrassed by the stupidity of the prospect of taking smart kids out of science class to tell them to run around on a field like retards. no fucking way.

so, i quit on the day of the first game, which was scheduled at the same time as math class, and went to math class instead.

i think it was unquestionably the smart thing to do, although it backfired slightly because my math teacher noticed and sent me to gifted classes for grade 10, which i did not want to do. however, it took my dad quite a while to get over the fact that his child was more interested in academics than sports.

this is why i don't breed:

i bring this up because this is the same kind of issue that's been annoying me for years. even after high school, i'd meet people that would remind me i was on the football team, "right?". no! i wish they didn't think that about me. that wasn't the reputation i wanted.

i wanted you to know i did well in math class; that was the reputation i wanted. but, nobody said that.