Cheerleaders . . . or . . . You're Gonna Get A K - I - C - K!
Posted: Monday, September 19, 2011
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
Cheerleading. No, I don't think so. Stop! Hell no! Any plainer? I'm old. I'm getting older and I have certainly out grown anything built around high school. The kids are from another planet and I am relieved about that. To think they are part of the Earth's gene pool is too dismal to contemplate. When I left school and found gainful employment and wacky friends in the real world, it was confirmed that they are not like us. And I KNOW there has NEVER been an accurate portrayal of high school in any movie or on any television. That 70s Show was somewhere in between but considering it was supposed to be smack dab in my era, I was still viewing the world through the wrong end of a telescope.
Yes, that's a capital "C" and that rhymes with "P" and that's what I want to do all over a cheerleader, or at least her pom-poms. Bitter? You bet!
Usually, they are girls and they are the alien invasion who thought they were blending into society. By the time this unknown species found it not to be true, it was too late for any major changes -- their brains were wiped clean so no one could down load information nor be able to understand their vacuous communication. NASA has been heading the wrong direction all these years, the void of space is carried right between their ears.
These girls would suddenly appear among us, though no one had actually seen them in class or near the school at any previous time, be chosen in the Spring, thinking, of course, they would survive the Summer, go to special, semi-secluded (though I am sure incredibly noisy) cheerleading camps and come back in the Fall as a mouth unto themselves.
Ah, cheerleading camp. If only they would stay there forever, amusing each other with yelling, hair brushing and constant phone contact if they are out of eye contact for more than the time space of seven digit dialing. In my dreams of their future, I envision a kind of massive lobster trap, they can get in but no one can get out. But that's just me.
Cheerleading camp -- hardly what it sounds. Hundreds of girls descend on a designated campus, full of themselves, each has it confirmed by the heavens that the universe revolves around them. They told me so, each and every one of them, at one time or another, and more that I didn't believe nor wished to hear. These jumpy-as-a-flea little darlings parade for each other. It's not really a camp; no one camps. And with a voice that projects over a football field or across a gymnasium, it's hardly isolated solitude. It's the only place on the planet where the girls wear the same clothes -- same loud, obnoxious color clothes for whatever they are doing. Body suits, warm up sweats, those little pleated skirts stretched across impossibly tiny hips yet to spread. I keep meaning to ask if they color coordinate their underwear but I fear they would show me.
I'm sure you noticed that I keep referring to them as "girls." I could have been much more harsh but my breeding and vocabulary prevent me from assaulting your intellect with anything else. And they are certainly not women or ladies. Out of convenience and in keeping with the previous paragraphs, they shall continually be known as "girls." Consider it a larva stage that eventually might be out-grown, but don't lay any bets.
It's really very sad that after an ordeal of the camp and a season or two as a cheerleader, these girls can no longer enter society as productive citizens. They talk with their arms and are a danger to any bodily part near them while they speak. And considering the lack of content for which they will speak, it's not worth losing said bodily parts. As of yet, there is no rehabilitation program when it comes to their re-entering society.
Something to do with walking around in short, tight uniforms with six to ten other girls leaves these females void of any self identity. Freud would have a field day researching the cases but, alas, I fear, even he would have no cure for these true lovers of the turf.
For all their cheering, very few actually understand the game, but they do know all the poop in school concerning personal lives, friends or not. All those vocal broadcasting lessons spill over into everything else they do. Maybe a few classes on thought processing would be in order.
In high school, I remember these girls haunting the fringes of my life. I say fringes because I tended not to do what they liked to do -- go out with the football team, cat fight with other girls, and generally making a spectacle of themselves and anything they did. I was terrific friends with the school librarian, it has served me well.
Cheerleaders were on the sliding scale of stupidity I used to gauge people encountered in high school. They were interchangeable with football players, athletic coaches and trash receptacles. Only the sports changed with the seasons.
But now, the sad fact remains that they became women who can never go back to gentle society. A top-of-the-head pony tail pulled so tightly that it cut off circulation to the brain, fate and high school shoveled them into a vacuum that a letter sweater will salve their soul but not rescue their intellect. Cheerleading trophies mean so little in the harsh light of reality and life.
I live in hope that one day elitist sports and their supporters will no longer dominate high school; that the field maintained year long for a select dozen to play on, will give way to classrooms, libraries, music halls and rooms where everyone can play, socialize and share; that high school priorities will change in favor of the intellectual, not the over-grown physically abusive; and that one day my knee won't ache when the weather changes because of my old cheerleading accident -- I didn't know she'd go that far when I kicked her.
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