Passing the Popsicle Stick Test
By Emily Morrison
My high school had a track around the football field, but we had no track team. Back then, in the early stone age, it was covered in grass. We had football, soccer, field hockey, basketball, baseball, softball, and wrestling, and I participated in three of those.
I say “I participated” because that’s all I did: participate. Except in softball. I grew up playing, so when spring came, I knew I’d see some real minutes.
“They used to call me Hoover,” I tell my kids, “because I sucked all those popflies into my glove like a vacuum cleaner.”
“Yeah right, Ma,” they say, and honestly, I’m not sure if that’s true or part of my false memory syndrome my sister says I suffer from.
Anyway, vacuum cleaner nickname or not, you get the point. You get good at the things you practice and sub-par at the stuff you don’t. I was fine being sub-par at basketball and soccer. I wasn’t going to school on an athletic scholarship.
Part of my complacency came from my best friend, the valedictorian of our class, who “participated” right along with me. We had as much fun laughing at our own dearth of talent as any two people can have riding the pine.
She still makes fun of me for asking our coach if I could “sit out” for the last 40 seconds of a particularly hypothermic soccer game because it was less embarrassing than going through the motions of attempting to kick a ball with no feeling left in my legs.
One year, we got it into our under-utilized sports brains that we should run more. If only we could sprint up those hills faster, outpace those girls in practice, then our coach would have to play us sooner.
Newsflash: it wasn’t our running holding us back. At least, that wasn’t my friend’s problem. She was always the fastest person on every team. She still is. That woman can run a 6:15 minute mile at age 47, but I digress.
Our problem?
Our lack of coordination which, you guessed it, came from a lack of practice.
No amount of running laps around a grassy track could fix that, but we tried. I biked to her place (a four-minute drive) then we’d run back to my house, jogging for two telephone poles, then walking two telephone poles.
Did we ever make it the whole way back? Can’t say.
The real test of our endurance came at the hands of our Polish, septuagenarian gym teacher, Mr. G. He would administer “the popsicle stick test” in gym class every year, and if you’re old like me, you might have done this too.
He gave us four popsicle sticks at the beginning of class and said, “Give me one of d’ese sticks every time you do a lap, and when you’re outta sticks, you’re done for da day.”
We each found/paid a friend to take two of our popsicle sticks and called it “da day” two laps in.
But here’s where the story gets good.
Since high school, I’ve completed three full marathons and eight halfs, and my best friend, the one who’s currently running a 6:15 mile, runs two miles daily, sprinting the first and jogging the second.
Isn’t that astounding? We were trying to be good at the wrong things. If only we’d just had a track team, maybe we wouldn’t have felt so lame.
As an English teacher, I’m always looking for good stories to tell my kiddos, and this is one of their favorites. Why? Because sometimes it helps to be reminded that the yard stick you’re measuring yourself by just isn’t accurate.
There’s an old saying, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Sometimes you don’t know what you’re good at because you haven’t tried it yet. It takes a lot of trial and error to find the right popsicle stick, but when you do, you’re willing to practice it every day.
So what are you waiting for, dear reader? Go find your own popsicle stick.
