School Sports DayAt some point in the distant past, someone at my school had built a large concrete tank behind the sheds and called it a swimming pool. Proud of this, they had a "Swimming Sports Day" in which everyone had to participate, even those who couldn't swim (they got to walk across the shallow end of the tank).
This would probably have been OK if the pool hadn't turned a deep opaque green the night before due to lack of maintainance. Even the school sports stars didn't want to go near the gloopy mess in the pool. We were practically pushed in. I'm sure some of the younger kids never surfaced again and the non-swimmers looked petrified.
Tell us your sports day horrors.
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chthonic, Thu 30 Mar 2006, 11:13)
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Old Enough to Know BetterNot my sport's day, you understand......my son's.
The ridiculous father's race. By the time in the afternoon this came around I had consumed a couple of bottles of chilled wine in relaxed and pleasant surroundings. Absolutely NO WAY was I going to be involved in that sort of thing, thank you very much.
Five minutes later I was walking towards the start line fuelled with fatherly devotion ('please win the race, dad. We know you can') and the recently alcohol fuelled and wifely inspired competitive spirit ('reckons he's won it five years on the trot and this year's a walkover'). Off with the shoes and barging on the start line.
Gun goes and I'm off like a rocket. Carl Lewis eat your heart out. And I'm ahead. At half way. And still ahead. After 60 metres. And then it all went wrong. The grass track started to slope gently downhill at this point and so I started to, as they say in the athletics trade, 'over rotate'. For the last 30 metres or so I career along with windmill arms and legs, losing control of my balance until the inevitable crash came - scattering the judges behind the finish line and demolishing the front three rows of chairs after it.
Having beaten all the dads it turns out I was beaten by some 17 year old brother of a kid at the school. Apparently at this stage I was pulled off the chief judge, yelling that I wanted to see the winner's child's birth certificate, and give me the winner's medal, please, if you don't mind (in a colloquial fashion).
I was confined to the car for the next year's sports day.
(, Thu 30 Mar 2006, 21:48, Reply)
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