February 27, 2012
Yay for cheerleaders! I was one, once upon a long time ago. And an even bigger cheer for small towns, because I would never (ever, ever, ever) have been a cheerleader anywhere but in small town USA. And ironically, considering the perky but brainless stereotype, it was my time as a high school cheerleader that got me through my first day of college.Why am I thinking about cheerleaders? Because today’s happy thing happily happened when my daughter, now the Cheer Coach at the same small school where I proudly pumped my poms, came in with this season’s colorful catalogue of cheer couture. It so happens my sister was here at the same time. She was a cheerleader too! And it gets better! Her daughter was also here and she is now, this very day, a cheerleader, under the direction of my daughter, about to pick a uniform from said catalogue. Squeal!
So we chattered and debated, bent side-by-side-by-side-by-side over the catalogue, laughing at the page boldly labeled “Vintage Styles,” where there was a picture of the very same 8-pleated skirt I wore, complete with knee socks. When I packed those socks away in a box and went to college, thank God I didn’t pack away the perky persona, at least not completely. It never quite fit me, but at a small school everybody gets to take on multiple rolls in order to build the whole experience. So your yearbook bio might read “National Honor Society, Rodeo Club, Business Professionals of America, Cheerleader.” That I was able to summon just the tiniest bit of that loud-in-front-of-a-crowd cheerleader attitude is the only thing that saved me.
In the very first class of my very first day of college, I was completely unsure I was in the right room. I was supposed to be in Honors English 111, but apparently it is not necessary for a professor to introduce herself or tell you if you are in the right place before she begins to call role. And apparently she is within her rights to demand that you tell perfect strangers something about yourself when she calls your name (assuming you are in the right class and she will indeed find your name). I couldn’t decide which would be worse, having her call my name which would force me to speak, or having her not call my name, forcing me to get up and leave.
I had absolutely no choice. Either way it went, I had to be a cheerleader. If she didn’t call my name, I would get up in front of everyone, give a charming smile and a perky wave and bounce out of the room. If she did call my name, I would introduce myself with spirit (“Who are, who are, who are we? We are, we are, we are thee pea-eye-rrr-aaa-ttt-eee-sss, pirates are the very best!”). Turns out she did call my name, and while inside I was cheering, outside I was able to introduce myself with a minimum of words and a small shaky smile. My very first essay for that class was about my small hometown, and the professor wrote comments in the margins that stay with me still, and she asked me to enter it in the university President’s Essay Contest. Yay for small town cheerleaders!
