I'm Not Average

Remember prison ball and jumping jacks and how your P.E. teacher made you try to climb that rope that hung from the ceiling and you never could, never?

Or how you had to do chin-ups and see how long you could hang and you could only hang something like 2.5 seconds but that wasn't good enough, oh no, you had to hang something like 65 seconds and you could never do that and thank God it was only pass/no pass and you got a pass just for showing up and trying. Which was good.

But when you got older. And P.E. teachers got smarter. Because now you got graded.
You got graded and at least once you got the dreaded C or the equally dreaded C+ and there went your whole grade-point average and speaking of average that's what you were now: plain-old-just-mediocre-better-luck-next-time-see-ya-later-average and you thought:

Now wait just a gosh darn minute who, exactly, is average?

And the answer came back ringing loud and clear over the top of that chin-up bar: Nobody.

You're not average because average is a lie. You're not average because average means stuck and you're not stuck, you're moving and becoming and trying and you're climbing over every bit of fear or opinion or "no you can't do that" you've ever heard.

So you scoff at average.

You laugh. You guffaw. And you run and you play and you move and the more you tell your body that it is a well-oiled machine the more it starts to believe you.

And then one night you have the craziest dream.

You're in the middle of your old gym. Your P.E. teacher is standing there. She is grinning. There is a rope before you...

So you climb it.

And there is absolutely no place to go but up.