Athletic humiliation and Henry Kissinger, how I’m missing yer
My dreams are only half with me at this point, but I remember a couple of things.
I was at a big gathering of people. It seemed like it was partly a training camp with a lot of athletic games. Maybe they were for discipline. Maybe they were for fun. But not being very good, I just tried to watch. I got criticized for it, but I just couldn’t participate.
I was trying to skirt the outsides of the field, and kept getting yelled at. I was distracting from a game of football, and a coach was mad that I messed up practice. I almost got hit by a ball.
I went to an adjacent field of activities, and there they were playing something a little more my speed. Maybe it was volleyball or dodgeball, but in real life, I’m good at neither. I didn’t even want to play, but sort of stood on the side and tried to watch. I kept getting almost hit by the ball, and people started getting annoyed by my presense. But they didn’t want me to play, and someone cattily remarked to nobody that there should be a limit to the size of the people playing.
Being Amazonish in stature and flabby to boot, I knew they were talking about me. Everyone playing was a petite, pretty girl, and they obviously didn’t want me there.
Then there was a military-looking guy who was playing, and they didn’t say anything about him, even though he was bigger than your average snobby girl. But where I’m fat, he’s muscled, and they don’t mind watching him play, either.
I bring this man’s presence up to them, and they just look down their noses at me. I know what I’m being told. Fat girls just don’t get to play.
So I walk away quite dejectedly, feeling like crying. I decide I’m going to leave this stupid camp, and start trying to find my car. I walking through a long, cavernous warehouse, on loan from some factory. There’s a path of plastic laid out for us to follow. At this point, I think that I’m at a conference of bookcrossers, which makes me even sadder, because I didn’t think fellow booklovers would be that cruel.
I walk with my head hanging down, passing people from the factory who are spending their free time polishing their show cars in the half-darkness.
I go outside and find my car, which is my brown Oldsmobile, my first car, in the parking area with grass matted down from many cars passing through.
In another part of the dream, I was visiting with an old man with a big nose and glasses. I couldn’t pin my finger on who he was, but I was sure I would remember who he was eventually.
Turns out he was Henry Kissinger. Don’t ask me why. Don’t even know that much about him. So when I woke up, I had Monty Python’s song Henry Kissinger in my head.
Henry Kissinger
How I’m missing yer
You’re the Doctor of my dreams
With your crinkly hair and your glassy stare
And your machiavellian schemes
I know they say that you are very vain
And short and fat and pushy but at least you’re not insane
Henry Kissinger
How I’m missing yer
And wishing you were here…
See, that’s the beauty of women’s football–being big was good. In fact, if there was a small woman on the field, I took distinct pleasure in knocking her on her booty, where she belonged. Get off my field!
So you were feeling ostracized by people you wouldn’t hang out with anyway, and it turns out they actually were your kind of people? Do you worry about that kind of thing–that people you like won’t like you? And why does your first car keep showing up in your dreams?
I think we want so badly to fit in, that anyone is our kind of people until they reject us.
And I liked that car. That car was… well, not cool, but it was my first car, and it drove like nothing I’ll ever see in the winter. And it had a big engine.
Why do I dream about things like that? Well, why do I dream about humiliation typical of high school? Same old insecurities, just through the filter of 11, almost 12 years, I suppose.
Insecurities can change, and lessen, but obviously they’re still there.
We all know I’m not athletic, and I haven’t wanted to fit in for a very long time. So who knows what my brain was thinking?
At the core of it, I suppose, it comes down to insecurities about my body. And those have only gotten worse with age.
Couldn’t agree more with Heather! Women’s football was great since I could kick anybody’s ass. And not just women. . . I recall doing pretty well in “touch” football in high schol gym classes.
I hate anxiety dreams like this when I keep getting (and feeling) rejected, even by people I don’t particularly care for, and especially for (too big, too slow, too unattractive) body reasons. . . . though I must say I’m relatively happy with my weight currently. . . breastfeeding does wonders! I think I’ll keep it up until E’s 10 or so
Hey! I didn’t know you played football. That’s truly badass.
And both of you ladies look fine. But maybe as women we’re doomed to have anxiety about body image, though I am glad to hear you are relatively pleased currently, Dawn.