Memoir 1

Field Hockey try outs. I’ve stopped screaming. I am in the fetal position, down on the asphalt, in the center of the track. Silence. No more shrieks; no more flapping wings. My body is shaking, tense. It is violent. I cannot stop it. I am clenched and shaking violently and I cannot stop it. My voice is caught inside of me. My body is trembling. I am so tight the tears are being smashed out of my eyes. I am squeezing them out, I am so rigid. I am face-down to the ground. And I am crying and I am silent and the world is silent and they have stopped flapping and they have left and everyone has stopped running.

Everyone has stopped running and they are standing around me. Looking at me.

After the first time it happened, the team got used to it. Once I’d stopped shaking and had pulled myself up off the ground, wiping clear the remaining tears, Coach B said “How about you sit out for the rest of this run.”

And so I did. Sitting next to her on the bleachers, watching the rest of the girls finish off the 2-mile run, we semi-discussed the slight hilarity of the fact that I was scared to death of birds. My only comment on the matter was “I told you so.”

In fact, I thought as I sat there, it had been very good thinking on my part that I had had the clarity to warn the team before my ‘situation’ presented itself. As a result, I believed the matter to have been taken by my teammates rather wonderfully. They knew what was going on when it happened- no ambulance was called, no freak out that I was having a heart attack or some such thing. One look at the sky and all questions were cleared immediately. I mean sure, they didn’t exactly know precisely what the extent of my reaction would be, but one never knows how they are going to react in a moment of terror. “Yes. I believe we handled it wonderfully” I thought to myself.

The girls nearest me had shielded me from the sky with their arms. It was quite kind and thoughtful actually, considering we hardly knew one another. As soon as I had collected myself, their concerned faces were right there, waiting to help me in anyway. Of course I didn’t need help of any sort. The geese were gone; they had flown off for the day. I was safe and I knew it.

“It happens all the time,” I told them, “really, I don’t need anything.” I smiled. “I’m fine now. Promise.”

And I really was quite fine, happy even. Purged. It was over. Maybe I was a little weak, had slight tremble to my body, but that’s just an after-effect, I was all good.

Still, Coach B had me sit out, which of course I did not mind at all. It became an unspoken ritual, fun, in a sense, at least for the other girls. I would be excused from runs if the geese were too close to the track. If they took flight mid-run and I had a panic attack, I wouldn’t have to finish.

I was constantly on the look-out. Aware of every caw, every flap, every movement skyward. That’s how I always was, not just at practice. It’s how I live my life- alert and conscious of any potential incoming bird. I became so in tune with these specific geese (which kind of disgusts me to say) that I could sense when they were going to take flight. How far they would go, how high. I could predict their paths. As a result I was able to strategized where and when to hide myself.

Usually they would be waiting for me on the field. Millions of them. Eating and pooping in a massive gray-brown blob, huge and disgusting and scary. This is where the “fun” came in. I would put on my cleats and shin guards over at the track and then sit inside of the snack bar, safe, secure, and blissfully unaware, a good distance away from the field. Everyone else would run at the flock, sticks in the air, screaming like warriors. I shudder to imagine the chaotic sounds and sights of the uproar as the birds haphazardly took flight. Ugh. Once the deed was done and the coast clear, someone would come fetch me, and we would all resume practice as if nothing unusual had taken place.

I loved that team. They were my defenders, my heroes. No one has ever taken better care of me. Our love was unconditional.

When I think back to those practices, I seem to recall myself as slightly lacking in the skills department and I wonder if the coaches picked me to be on the team out of sheer anticipation of the situations and excitement my phobia would bring to us all.