Katie Ruins Fun: The Story of an Athlete

I am what you’d call an indoor girl. I generally choose my entertainment destinations based on if there will be ample seating and a guaranteed absence of bugs, although I once went camping and peed in the woods without screaming, so I’m basically Davy Crockett in a dress. This is due largely to my phobia of bees and the time my ex knocked a coffee timer off the counter causing a sustained high pitched squealing to erupt from the broken instrument and dozens of cockroaches came flooding out of the cabinets and drains like a biblical plague except worse because it happened to me. I do like spending time outside if it involves a patio and cigarettes and people bringing me beer in exchange for money, and I did golf on the regular back in the day, although it’s been so long since I’ve hit the links that my swing now looks like I’m trying to hit a tornado of ghosts with a club. Despite this, when my neighbors invited my ex and I to the beach to play sports one weekend, I dusted off my softball glove and threw on a pair of already ripped jeans because they were comfortable enough to move around in and I have the tendency to fall down. I am constantly slamming my shins into the bed frame and tripping over imagined cracks in the sidewalk. I once gave myself a black eye because I ran into a door frame trying to find my keys in the dark. My makeup shade is “Bruise.”

We started out with football, which was great because catching a football hurts my hands and my spiral looks like I filled a condom with jelly and tried to throw it like a tomahawk. The ball toppled end over end every time I threw it and generally landed about ten feet in front of me, which I’m sure was super fun for everyone involved. They tried to teach me how to throw the ball like someone with motor skills, but this soon proved to be hopeless and we decided to play frisbee instead. It had been some time since I had thrown a frisbee, but if children and hippies could do it, I was certain I could too. I mean, you just let it go and it basically flies itself, how hard could it be?

Very hard, it turns out. I was even worse at frisbee, and despite pouring all of my concentration into aiming at my intended target, every time I let go, it would catapult out of my hand like a coked up racehorse and land about twenty feet to the right of the person I was shooting for. They would then have to walk over and get it, and the circle would shift, so that we were rotating around the park like some demented ballroom dance in which I am slowly annoying everyone else to exhaustion. Throw, rotate. Throw, rotate. Until the boys decided to play football again and I sat down with a cigarette and it occurred to me that I’m the dweeb from gym class who kicks the ball like Frankenstein and then gets winded tying their shoes. I had always pictured myself as the hip chick that slams the softball out of the park into the buzzkill principal’s car and then is carried on the shoulders of her adoring classmates while being showered with Target gift cards and bricks of cheese. (I’m not really a flowers type of girl.) Well, if I have to be a dweeb, then I’m going to be a Bill Gates dweeb, not a Chuckie Finster dweeb. Now to learn some skills other than eating my weight in cereal and finding creative substitutes for toilet paper. Can Harry Potter trivia make you famous?