Last weekend I took another step towards my integration in Czech Republic – I skied. Naturally, the experience was a mixture of having fun and making a fool of myself. To start with, I had no idea we were going to ski. I thought we were just going to spend a nice and cosy weekend at Lukash’s parents. That’s why I didn’t take any clothes and I had to wear Lukash’s. Even while I was putting on the oversize trousers and jackets I wished the day would be over. I wished it again about an hour later already at the car park of the České Petrovice skiing ground which is near Choceň when I put on a polar hat, a helmet and a pair of cheap “hippie wannabee” glasses. Well, eventually the day ended exactly when it had to and in no way was that influenced by my wishes.
The friend of Lukash’s who we went there with lent me a pair of ski and shoes and took his younger brother with us, too, who, a beginner as he was, did about a thousand times better than me. I know that because I was watching him all the time: after all both he and I were at the children’s playground! My scanned ticket below proves that to all disbelievers:
If I have to be honest, I did comparatively well for a person who had never got on a pair of ski in their life. It took me some time to get used to the fact that my legs had become heavier and more uncontrollable than usual but then I pretty much learned how to stop so I spent the next hour and a half going up and down something I, to console myself, call a hill which was actually more like a “slightly slanting plane”. Around me almost-babies were going down the big children’s hill completely fearlessly bursting with laughter after every fall and reminding me how incredible, brave and wonderful children are! Of course I did fall. Three times altogether with the second fall being the only one I’d afford to do ever again. The first marked my unsuccessful attempt to catch the rope tow (after at least ten 6-year-olds did it without batting an eyelid) and the third – my final descend, this time down the big hill (under Lukash’s insistence) after which I decided that ski descends are too fast for me to let me control them. But I guess it’s like that in every beginning?
The truth is I’m really bad at sports, especially at those where there’s a lot of or too fast movement involved. (In my world, chess is indisputably a type of sport.) I’m easily frightened and not persistent which hinders me additionally. I realise that this inability of mine is rooted in my childhood when I used to be the youngest and shortest in the class and I did worse than any of my classmates at anything we did in PE (I’m lying! Actually I’ll never forget how I did the candle pose and my PE teacher said to another teacher, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”) At high school I wasn’t that short anymore but I was often told I had “fingers made of cheese”. I blame no one, especially my parents who never signed me up to any sports. That surely let me develop another quality of mine. I rather try to accept myself as I am – not good at sports. Of course I’ll keep trying because movement is important and healthy. One day, however, I’ll just go back to living in a village and I’ll have a garden with orchard trees and vegetables as well as chickens (sometimes I also dream of a cow) that will require more than enough natural movement on my part to stop me from coming up with some artificial compensating the lack of movement for the sake of survival in the modern human’s life things such as two pieces of wood you use to slide on the snow.
Or… or sport makes us come back not to the human’s innate movement but rather to our childhood? To doing things not directly related to our survival? To playing? That sounds logical, too. And good.
That’s why next to my wooden house with a big orchard and vegetable garden with chickens (and a cow?) hanging about there will be a small extension where I’ll keep my bike. And, all right, there might be a pair of ski, too. And my hiking shoes. And most definitely rackets for badminton – the only sport I think I play better than Lukash.
And, of course, there I’ll keep the whole sports equipment of (probably) my 100% Czech husband and my children who’ll naturally do sports. Only, I’ll most probably not be the one to teach them. 🙂
a blog about (making sense of) life 