I Dare You

To say I'm competitive is an extreme understatement. As one of seven children, it's no wonder. We always competed...for the last serving of dinner, for our parents' attention, for the best spot in the car. When you are one of so many, you HAD TO fight for your position. To be the first to do anything was like finding the Holy Grail, and we climbed and scraped our way through many a situation to earn our standing amongst the crowd.

To this day, all it takes to make me rise up to a battle is for someone to either tell me I cannot or shouldn't do (insert task here) or to brag that they DID do (insert task here). Heck, even the first kiss with my now husband was based on a dare! We were goofing around, and he told me if I kept it up, he'd kiss me -- thinking it would make me stop whatever it was I was doing to annoy him. Little did he know he was setting himself up for a lifetime of fun...

My freshman year at college, I had a somewhat less than stellar first showing. I'd always earned pretty good grades, skating through high school on minimal effort and staying out of trouble. But at school, away, all on my own, and somehow enrolled in CALCULUS?? I actually failed my first semester. My GPA was...well...1.6. That earned me a big fat "P" on my transcript: PROBATION. Seeing that, and knowing how precious every dollar was spent toward earning that, my father laid it out in plain English at Christmas break.

"You need to come back and live at home and go to Oakland University. You obviously can't keep up there."

COME BACK HOME? Leave U of M for OAKLAND??? He must have been INSANE...no one leaves a Big 10 school for a local university to LIVE AT HOME and share a room with her sister, much less be under the watchful eye of the Big Sicilian. Oh, no, mister...that's all I needed to knuckle down and do better. I'm sure now, looking back, that he did it KNOWING I'd push back against his edict, just to prove him wrong. And I did...not immediately and not drastically, though I did four-point my final two years.

Of course, I had to get through the college boyfriend transferring to U of M and taking classes together, and the inevitable break-up with said boyfriend a few years later. Then my father died suddenly, and I decided many days that simply getting out of bed was asking too much. My grades during those years clearly reflected those occurrences.

Sometimes, the challenge I claim is trivial and means nothing to anyone but me. Many times it focuses on some physical feat I determine must be overcome to prove a point. My daughters' swim coach used to say, " Swim in your own lane!" meaning, "Compete with yourself." That sums me up to a T. I'll hear someone say, "Wow, I just rode X miles on my bike!" so I'll go out and ride X +1 to see if I can. Then I'll do it again but try for a faster time. Or I'll try to do it on a tougher course...anything it takes to "take it up a notch."

That reasoning has led me to do lots of silly things over the years. Told to take it easy during pregnancy meant laughing at concerned warnings from friends. I painted bedrooms even though a co-worker told me not to raise my arms over my head. I shoveled rocks at 38 weeks pregnant because I refused to sit and be a blob or wait for someone else to do it. Granted, I broke my water that night a delivered two weeks early...oops. But two weeks LATER after my post-surgical check-up, I was on my bike riding around the neighborhood because technically I COULD.

I never learn.

When I turned 40, I decided I had to run a mile. I'd had bouts with jogging attempts over the years, but nothing serious and not for any measurable duration. Then I determined that to be a REAL runner, I had to finish a 5K. I started taking our black Lab Truman with me, and we accomplished a mile in fairly short order. I was well on my way to two miles when I developed what I thought was a sore knee. It hadn't occurred to me that at my age, with bad shoes and a dog dragging me along on concrete, I might do some serious damage.

Turns out it was actually a fractured femur starting to splinter off into two other directions. But before we figured that out, I hadn't stopped running because I had to keep competing with that worthy adversary...MYSELF! I'd also trekked through an airport on that leg, climbed flights of stairs daily at school, and chaperoned a trip to our state's capitol. Finally, after x-rays, two MRI's and a frantic phone call from the doctor telling me to GET OFF THAT LEG, I was told to cool it on the training. Two weeks on crutches and stern warnings cured me of running for five years...

Once hobbled, I decided to tackle swimming next. The girls were on the swim team and complaining MIGHTILY about how many laps they had to do each day. No problem, I told them...tell me how many, an I'll do the same in solidarity. "You'll never make it!" they laughed. That's all it took to force me to call their bluff.

Holy crap...it was A LOT of laps...but if they could do it, I had to. I started with two laps...then four...then ten. Slowly I built up to a mile by the end of that summer and repeated it for the next two summers just to see if I still could.
Last summer, I finally scheduled a surgery I'd put off longer than necessary. For years, a female issue had plagued me, and I'd finally reached my breaking point. After the first few horrific days at Camp Beaumont (where I was humbled by pain and the extensive nature of the surgery), I was allowed to walk "small distances" but NOTHING ELSE. PSHAW! In the hospital, I'd been doing wall push-ups in the shower (where I couldn't get caught), and then started a strict walking program at home. I'd time myself and measure my distance using a program on my iPhone, and then beat each previous day's efforts. At my two-week check-up, I proudly shared my progress and asked for clearance for swimming, biking, tennis...all denied. And I was soundly reprimanded for the walking regimen.

That obviously made me up the challenge...didn't that doctor know who she was dealing with??? By fall, I was walking my typical three miles and had even worked my thrice sliced and decimated core muscles up to a full minute in plank.
The latest accomplishment has been to revisit that 5K dream. I'd toyed with it a few times over the past five years, only to give in to temporary issues like shin splints, excess weight or laziness. But it never left me, that desire to reach the elusive milestone. I'd see other friends, neighbors or random strangers doing the same...some much older, heavier, riddled with health issues. Surely I COULD do it. I even dreamed of running...vivid dreams where I'd run great lengths for no reason. So in March I looked up the Cool Running Couch to 5K program once again, and hit the treadmill.

By the end of June, I'd run my first REAL 5K, but only after a trial attempt alone on a local track. I had to do it for myself before I did it in front of others...and then when I ran the public race, I had to beat my solo time.

I never know what the next challenge will be. And sometimes I'll think about it for years before diving in and conquering it. Other times, it's a random statement from someone else that throws the proverbial gauntlet down at my feet. That person may never know what they've forced me to do! But if you are reading this now, you have a powerful secret to get me to try something.

Just don't dare me. I might not be able to help myself.

Letdown

The year leading up to my wedding was an incredibly busy and exciting one. I had just started my first full-time teaching job in a Catholic school after spending the past two years working four part-time jobs simultaneously. I knew NOTHING about running a classroom or teaching curriculum beyond what I'd been told by the best principal I ever had. I asked what exactly I was to teach.

Sister Gloria Jean handed me the English and American history textbooks and said, "Teach this."

So I did...in addition to religion, art, handwriting and spelling. It was A LOT of work...and I got only two precious breaks all week while the kids went to computers and gym.

We also were charged with getting those sixty eighth-graders ready for Confirmation and graduation -- two huge events that took place within the last month or two of school. My wedding date was a mere two weeks AFTER the end of the year. So by May, I could hardly think straight. I often look back on that year and those kids and wish for a do-over so I could tell them, "Hey! I really AM a good teacher! I really DO know what I'm doing!" But whatever...such is life...it is what it is...blah blah blah. Somehow I made it through, the year ended, and I got married.

We left for the honeymoon vacation of a lifetime.

And then I was back home in my new apartment while my husband went back to work. There was little else for me to do but write thank you notes and make dinner.

I was bored.

I wandered around the (little) apartment looking for something...ANYTHING...to occupy my time.

I shopped a bit...but what could I possibly need after a wedding??? Our possessions hardly fit in the apartment as it was.

I finally found the pool and spent long afternoons there reading trash novels. My husband would come home in time for dinner, whipped from a long day, and have me pounce on him to go do something...ANYTHING...to entertain me. To say he was irritated is an understatement.

It was just that post-wedding, post-school year letdown. I had been riding a wave of adrenalin for so long that my body didn't know how to sit still. I craved activity, excitement, ANYTHING more than what I had.

You know where this is leading, right?

Fast forward...this past school year was perhaps the busiest yet. I worked harder this year than ever before, both academically and administratively. We have an incredibly diverse study body with specialized needs for whom we plan individual lessons, and we're going through accreditation. A teacher will read that and shudder. Everyone else can just assume that it's TERRIBLE. And I was put in charge of THE DOCUMENT. Committees worked and reported and drafted their piece, gave them to me, I edited, revised and entered the information. It's over 100 pages long...and I sat on/wrote for two committees myself.

And then there was this little matter of community activism. Since the day after the November elections last fall, I have been 110% consumed with helping save my library. I stepped off a cliff and into the political arena, and life will never be the same.

Oh, and I was incredibly lucky to be able to start freelance writing IN MY SPARE TIME. Ha!

So if you had told me a year ago -- when I had just had major surgery and was happy to be able to walk across a room without vicodin -- that I would help start a grassroots coalition, speak multiple times to audiences greater than 100, be a panelist on a televised town hall, talk on radio with a progressive warrior, record a robo-call and CHANGE THE WORLD in my little city, I'd have LAUGHED AT YOU.

Not a day has gone by in those nine months that I haven't had a full e-mail inbox, multiple FB messages, texts and phone calls galore. Not a day has gone by that I haven't been fully engaged with a plan of attack for my hours. Not a week has gone by that I didn't have somewhere to be nearly every night.

Until this week.

Letdown.

I don't know what to do with myself. I'm bored...despondent, nearly! All my politicos are back to work. My husband is dreadfully busy and battle weary at his job. My kids sleep all morning and are too old to be interested in mommy's adventures ("What makes you think I WANT to wash the car???" spit my 15 year old at me yesterday...), and the things I SHOULD do lack excitement.

I mean...come on...appear on TV or scrub a toilet? Can you blame me??? I'm lucky to shower before dinner, and that's only because I had (thankfully!) two good reasons to be somewhere the last two nights.

Even then, it took me an inordinate amount of time to put together an agenda for a board I chair...an agenda that should have taken ten minutes to formulate. I think I spent over two hours of staring at the computer...trying to remember what to do...looking for e-mails with snippets of details for the meeting.

Oh, and refreshing my e-mail and key websites to see if there was any news, information, contact regarding the library issue.

At one point, I almost called my husband to ask if our network was down.

Refresh...sigh.
Refresh...sigh.
Refresh...WAHHH!!!

The greatest irony is that in a week or two, I'll find my rhythm again. School will ramp-up, the push for November elections will be under way, and I'll be crying uncle at the heap of business on my plate.

But until then...you'll find me wandering the house, staring into space, idly refreshing tabs on my computer browser.