Childhood Dreams

Source

Most of us can remember things we dreamed of doing as kids. In fact, some of us even had more than one dream so it was hard to imagine which one to pick.

I will say, that's one awesome thing about living in a free country. You can dream of becoming anything you want to be. The possibilities are endless, right? I mean, I swore I was going to be a teacher. Mom says that from the time I was little, I always played "school" and I was always the teacher. Am I a teacher? Nope! That's a whole other story for another day.

Mom believed strongly in keeping kids busy to keep them out of trouble so we were all signed up for things all the time. My sisters were always so athletic and involved in so many things. They played volleyball and softball among other things and they rode horses. I was always kept busy too, but mine was more in gymnastics, dance classes, and for a while cheer leading. Mom even put me in swimming classes which I hated for some reason. I don't know if someone tried to drown me once or what, but I could not learn to swim in that class.

I was always kinda jealous of my sisters because they were so athletic. Sister #3 always picked on me, and still does to this day, that I did gymnastics and other things because I wasn't coordinated enough to play sports. Really? Let me see your ass do a flip on the uneven parallel bars with no coordination, missy! You'd end up looking more like this...

Source

The balance beam was no picnic either, believe me. But gymnastics definitely gave me flexibility which according to ib over at the Habitual Hobbit makes me naughty (in his post a while back) because I can still bend over and put my hands flat on the floor.

When we moved to New Mexico, it became a big thing for me and my friends to go to the base pool every day. We spent hours cooking in the desert sun, and it was hot as hell for someone who didn't really know how to swim. I mean, I could tread water and do the strokes, but anything that involved putting my head underwater was not happening. Needless to say, I got my ass kicked when I would try to race friends.

Source

I think I finally asked Sister #3 one day how she was able to hold her breath under water without holding her nose, and she just kinda told me to blow out through my nose while I was underwater. I ended up teaching myself how to do it, basically. After that, I was the SHIT in the swimming pool. That one little thing had eluded me since I was a young child, and just setting my mind to it by myself was all it took.

One day my best friend and I were racing in the pool. I was kicking her tail, as was the trend since I had conquered the water. When we got out of the pool to rest for a little bit, Amy went to get us something to drink. This grown man walks up to me and tells me he had been watching Amy and I in the pool. Well, this was before the days of "Stranger Danger" and we really didn't find anything creepy about that statement. It turned out he was a swim coach who was trying to put together a swim team on base. He was impressed with our swimming abilities and wanted us to come try out.

We were so excited! We would get to swim in a much bigger pool, and we would basically be training by doing exactly what we did every day anyway. We showed up and quickly learned that the hardest part of racing was learning how to dive in the pool properly.

Source

You don't get to just dive in and think you are going to look like this. I mean, you notice the one that went the deepest in that picture? Yeah, that person will probably LOSE that race all because of the dive. You can't go too deep or it slows you down majorly. So Coach would make us dive into the pool in the shallow end to scare us out of going too deep. I mean, scrape your face on the bottom of the pool one good time, and you'll learn not to do that anymore! Yeah, I did it. 'Cuz I'm adventurous like that. But I belly flopped more than anything trying to make sure I didn't go too deep.

Anyway, we had a blast that summer. I was probably in the best shape ever because of all of the swimming I did, and I'd ride my bike to the pool every day. I was a bit high on myself because I found that I could beat other people besides Amy. I was actually pretty damn good.

Unfortunately, the Air Force had another visions for us... or at least for our fathers. Both of them got orders to move to other bases. We moved to South Carolina, and I can't remember where Amy moved to. Because my father was planning to retire here, they ended up buying a house so we didn't live on base for the first time in my life. Of course, this meant I had no freakin' access to a pool. They really didn't have one in town except at the YMCA, and their pool wasn't that big. They also didn't have swim teams or any open swimming times. I was crushed. Out went my childhood dreams of becoming a competitive swimmer, and to me, doing something that was a hell of a lot more athletic than what my sisters had done.

Source

The Olympics were always a big deal in our house, especially when it was only every 4 years. Watching the gymnastics and the swimmers was always huge for me. Now I will pretty much watch every bit of it. I live vicariously through these athletes, and I feel so much emotion with their wins and losses. I don't know how many times I've cried from watching them. At least I get to help root for them to make all of their childhood dreams come true.

(As a side note: I was VERY disappointed in NBC's coverage of the last Olympics. Where the hell were all of the personal interest stories we usually have to give us more background on the athletes?? They have two jobs in the world of sports... Horse racing and the freakin' Olympics! Get it right next time.)

So what were your childhood dreams? What did you crazy folks want to be when you grew up?