Sunday, January 15, 2006
hater
I am a girl's basketball groupie. Considering the sheer size of my school (right around 2,000 students), I have taught a disproportionately large percentage of the girl's basketball team, including the every starter on the varsity team. I go to most of the varsity home games, wearing my red and black team sweatshirt.
Last semester, I also taught a number of girls on the ninth grade team, but because the ninth grade games are on Wednesday night (the same night my biological children had practice for the Christmas musical at church), I was never able to watch them play. Every week, my ninth grade players would ask me if I was coming to the game, and I kept promising that I would be there after Christmas.
One of the reasons that I try to attend my kids games is that not many people come to watch them play. Especially when the girls are playing. Parents have to work. There is no concept of school spirit in the city. School spirit is a luxury for athletic booster clubs to fund. Game day ribbons, and temporary tattoos, and cheerleader-painted banners in the hallway all come with a price, and that price is parents. The soccer moms and dads that spend their children's Saturdays at the ball field, who send their kids to cheerleading camp or basketball camp, and who spend fifteen years just waiting for the day that their kid will be playing or cheering on the local high school team so they can put their name and number on a sticker on the back of their SUV - those parents are the hidden source of school spirit. They are the ones that order the giant rolls of paper and paint; they put the ribbons and tattoos on their credit cards, and then they use the money they raise to buy more stuff and better uniforms and cushioned folding seats in school colors. They are the screamers in the stands. You take those things for granted until you notice that they are gone. It's only then that it occurs to you. Right. Somebody had to pay for all that.
On Wednesday, two teams were playing at the same time: ninth grade and JV girls. I have ninth grade students on both teams, so I watched the first part of the JV game in the main gym. On my way downstairs to the ninth grade game, I ran into one of the assistant principals. He warned me to stay upstairs and keep watching the JV game. "It's a massacre down there." I arrived towards the end of the second quarter. The score was forty-something to eight, but that was not the first thing I noticed. The first thing I noticed was that we were playing a bunch of white girls.
The bleachers were filled with the visiting team's parents. At the very edge of the stands, I saw two faculty members from my school, and I took a seat behind them. I glanced at the players on the bench for the visiting team. They took up two rows. Every single one of them was white. I leaned forward and whispered to my fellow teacher, "Are we playing a private school?" Of course we were. Of course. All the girls on the visiting team had long, flat-ironed smooth hair pulled up into identical ponytails in shades that varied from honey to caramel to chestnut. On a public school basketball team, this would have been impossible.
It took me a few minutes to process everything, then I started to get angry. Our team consisted of the five girls that were on the court and a handful of alternates. The private school team had enough alternates to play an entirely different team each period. Our team had one grandmother, a few classmates and three teachers in the stands. The private school girls had bleachers filled with mothers and fathers. The visiting team was taller, and thinner, and they were kicking our ass.
I kept looking at the parents in the stands. The mothers with their Louis Vuitton and Fendi bags, the father who kept taking phone calls on his Blackberry. I wondered what these parents did for a living. What jobs could they have that allowed them to attend middle-of-the-week, middle-of-the afternoon basketball games way on the other side of the city? What sort of jobs did they have that allowed them all that flexible time off plus paid enough to allow them to send their children to a school whose yearly tuition cost more than my graduate school? They kept calling out congratulations to their daughters for every single good shot or pass. I started to hate them.
With every basket, and foul, and free throw, I found myself getting more and more angry. I was mad at Victoria and Caitlin and Claire, with their long limbs, shiny, straight hair, and great shots. I started to tally up all the things these girls had that my students didn't. Every point bothered me. The fact that they had come down to my school with all their privileges and advantages, and proceeded to massacre my girls, it seemed wrong.
After the game, my players came over to hug me. They were sorry, they said. They were sorry they didn't win. I told them it was okay, that I was glad I got to see them play, that they had played well. I told them I was proud of them.
When I went home, my husband asked how the game was. I sat in my reading chair with my head in my hands and told him how awful it had been. I told him that I was a hater. I didn't want to be a hater, but I was a hater anyway. I hated those private school girls. I hated Victoria and Caitlin and Claire. I hated the fact that they probably drove home in a Lexus and went skiing over Christmas and that they would all score really high on the SAT. I hated them.
I started to cry. I don't want to be a hater, I said. Because I know that life is not easy for those girls. I know it is not easy to be a prep school girl, and I know they are under so much pressure to be smart, and thin, and beautiful, and to get the ball in the basket every time they shoot. I know they work harder at it than my kids do, that they are disciplined and driven, that they diet and worry and are mean to each other in the hallways. I know that, in many ways, it sucks to be Victoria and Caitlin and Claire, and their pain is no less valid or meaningful just because they come from a world of wealth and advantage.
In the end though, I also know that the private school girls will be winners. They will score higher, and go to better colleges, and drive nicer cars, and get better jobs, and make more money. Even though I know that life is not just about winning and losing and cars and houses and tax brackets and ivy league and basketball, even though I know that all that stuff, in the end, has nothing to do with happiness or meaning or peace, and even though I can logically play it all through in my mind and see the truth in that - just once, just once. I wanted my students to have a chance to play those girls and win.
Last semester, I also taught a number of girls on the ninth grade team, but because the ninth grade games are on Wednesday night (the same night my biological children had practice for the Christmas musical at church), I was never able to watch them play. Every week, my ninth grade players would ask me if I was coming to the game, and I kept promising that I would be there after Christmas.
One of the reasons that I try to attend my kids games is that not many people come to watch them play. Especially when the girls are playing. Parents have to work. There is no concept of school spirit in the city. School spirit is a luxury for athletic booster clubs to fund. Game day ribbons, and temporary tattoos, and cheerleader-painted banners in the hallway all come with a price, and that price is parents. The soccer moms and dads that spend their children's Saturdays at the ball field, who send their kids to cheerleading camp or basketball camp, and who spend fifteen years just waiting for the day that their kid will be playing or cheering on the local high school team so they can put their name and number on a sticker on the back of their SUV - those parents are the hidden source of school spirit. They are the ones that order the giant rolls of paper and paint; they put the ribbons and tattoos on their credit cards, and then they use the money they raise to buy more stuff and better uniforms and cushioned folding seats in school colors. They are the screamers in the stands. You take those things for granted until you notice that they are gone. It's only then that it occurs to you. Right. Somebody had to pay for all that.
On Wednesday, two teams were playing at the same time: ninth grade and JV girls. I have ninth grade students on both teams, so I watched the first part of the JV game in the main gym. On my way downstairs to the ninth grade game, I ran into one of the assistant principals. He warned me to stay upstairs and keep watching the JV game. "It's a massacre down there." I arrived towards the end of the second quarter. The score was forty-something to eight, but that was not the first thing I noticed. The first thing I noticed was that we were playing a bunch of white girls.
The bleachers were filled with the visiting team's parents. At the very edge of the stands, I saw two faculty members from my school, and I took a seat behind them. I glanced at the players on the bench for the visiting team. They took up two rows. Every single one of them was white. I leaned forward and whispered to my fellow teacher, "Are we playing a private school?" Of course we were. Of course. All the girls on the visiting team had long, flat-ironed smooth hair pulled up into identical ponytails in shades that varied from honey to caramel to chestnut. On a public school basketball team, this would have been impossible.
It took me a few minutes to process everything, then I started to get angry. Our team consisted of the five girls that were on the court and a handful of alternates. The private school team had enough alternates to play an entirely different team each period. Our team had one grandmother, a few classmates and three teachers in the stands. The private school girls had bleachers filled with mothers and fathers. The visiting team was taller, and thinner, and they were kicking our ass.
I kept looking at the parents in the stands. The mothers with their Louis Vuitton and Fendi bags, the father who kept taking phone calls on his Blackberry. I wondered what these parents did for a living. What jobs could they have that allowed them to attend middle-of-the-week, middle-of-the afternoon basketball games way on the other side of the city? What sort of jobs did they have that allowed them all that flexible time off plus paid enough to allow them to send their children to a school whose yearly tuition cost more than my graduate school? They kept calling out congratulations to their daughters for every single good shot or pass. I started to hate them.
With every basket, and foul, and free throw, I found myself getting more and more angry. I was mad at Victoria and Caitlin and Claire, with their long limbs, shiny, straight hair, and great shots. I started to tally up all the things these girls had that my students didn't. Every point bothered me. The fact that they had come down to my school with all their privileges and advantages, and proceeded to massacre my girls, it seemed wrong.
After the game, my players came over to hug me. They were sorry, they said. They were sorry they didn't win. I told them it was okay, that I was glad I got to see them play, that they had played well. I told them I was proud of them.
When I went home, my husband asked how the game was. I sat in my reading chair with my head in my hands and told him how awful it had been. I told him that I was a hater. I didn't want to be a hater, but I was a hater anyway. I hated those private school girls. I hated Victoria and Caitlin and Claire. I hated the fact that they probably drove home in a Lexus and went skiing over Christmas and that they would all score really high on the SAT. I hated them.
I started to cry. I don't want to be a hater, I said. Because I know that life is not easy for those girls. I know it is not easy to be a prep school girl, and I know they are under so much pressure to be smart, and thin, and beautiful, and to get the ball in the basket every time they shoot. I know they work harder at it than my kids do, that they are disciplined and driven, that they diet and worry and are mean to each other in the hallways. I know that, in many ways, it sucks to be Victoria and Caitlin and Claire, and their pain is no less valid or meaningful just because they come from a world of wealth and advantage.
In the end though, I also know that the private school girls will be winners. They will score higher, and go to better colleges, and drive nicer cars, and get better jobs, and make more money. Even though I know that life is not just about winning and losing and cars and houses and tax brackets and ivy league and basketball, even though I know that all that stuff, in the end, has nothing to do with happiness or meaning or peace, and even though I can logically play it all through in my mind and see the truth in that - just once, just once. I wanted my students to have a chance to play those girls and win.
