Hidemi’s Rambling No.366

by Hidemi Woods on October 12, 2011

Throughout my schooldays, a field day was a nightmare for me. I was poor at gymnastic and a slow runner. I always swaggered as the smartest kid at school, but a field day was the annual event that I was humiliated as a laughingstock in front of all students and their parents. The team events like tug-of-war did less damage because my poor performance was covered up among other students. But individual competitions like a hundred-meter dash were such dreadful events. It was raced in groups of six and I was always last. I don’t know how it’s felt to breast the tape. My parents came to cheer and bring lunch on a field day every year and always felt embarrassed in the stands. When I was little, I had been extremely introverted and hardly spoken to anyone except for my family members. But with a lot of effort, I had become sociable by the time I was in the fourth grade. And on a field day of that year, a strange thing happened. I came in third in the hundred-meter dash. I never thought sociability affected ability to run. I assumed my long spell of a humiliating field day was over. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t. I had been skinny but as I got sociable, I gained an appetite and got fat. I soon returned to be a back marker in the race on a field day. I became more unsightly as a slow fat runner and drew more laughter than before. Humiliation added up to a field day…