Gymnastics is like building a house, furniture and everything. The skills you learn are bricks. The simple skills can be boring bricks that are easily built, others are more exciting, but risky and difficult. Sometimes, tears will come. Sometimes, you'll have off days. Sometimes, you'll score far below a medal.
It's happened to all of us. Me too. That one tiny mistake that turns into two, then three, then four. The time that we've all been last in line.
It was so important. The first meet of 2010. I had scored so great on vault and knew I had qualified for third. Not the best, but cool, right?
It falls from there. My floor routine that I'd worked on for months and conditioned and everything for had been ruined as I knew it. My hip was still healing, so I didn't make my splits. I lost my balance on the arabesque. I didn't make my tic toc. My split leap was horrible. And, to conclude it, my legs split in the back handspring. "So NOW I do the back walkover, huh? Thanks, Hope." I got fifth.
Beam was my last event of the day. Take note, it was my first level 4 meet ever. And it was my WORST meet ever. With shaky arms, I saluted, and with shaky legs, I mounted. Every five seconds, I fell. I held my scale for a very long time, but ended it with a fall. I was so embarrassed. "8.10", read the scoreboard. "Oooh..." everyone said in disbelief of it. Beam was my favorite event. I was ALWAYS good at it. I never failed. But this time I did. And it disappointed everyone, but no one was more upset than me. "I am great at beam. I can't believe anyone saw that. I looked so dumb out there." I knew I had to push on, and although I held seventh and last place, I could lose with dignity.
It ends with me getting my medal, fifth place ribbon, and last place ribbon. Marquie Peyton was in front of me, also kind of embarrassed. After, in the all-around, with a 26.2, I beat Marquie by .1 points. "It's okY," she said sadly. "Someone will always be last." I agreed feeling slightly disappointed too. "I just wish it wasn't me," I thought. I liked how we both knew how we were both feeling. She was last in all-around, I was last in beam. We both knew how embarrassing it was to stand in last place in front of about 70 people. And all we could do was say that we were at the bottom, but we tried.
The girls that placed first were so... Just... Hard to explain. They never really tried. The girl who got first on floor had the body type and her dance was perfect. At practices, we both had the best and longest going routines when my coach would turn off the music for every mistake. The girl who got first on vault was careless. Her front handsprings were effortless. She was as tall as me, but better than me. Arrogant and talk backy too. The girls that really tried hard, like me, Marquie and Judy, deserved to go to level 5 more than those two girls.
But the homes we'd built weren't strong enough yet, and we needed to learn that someone will always be last, and sometimes, it's you.
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