A Genie In Chucks: Most D.

This post is dedicated to the worst award I ever received.

First a little backstory…

When I was a kid, I played pretty much every sport that existed; some I played well, others very poorly. Like hockey for instance; the idea of dragging myself into a freezing arena every Monday night, spending an hour padding myself to ridiculous proportions, and then wrapping it all up in miles of sticky tape, was like the ultimate torture. My disdain for hockey endures to this very day.

Then there was horseback riding; this I will need to devote an entire post to because it’s a doozy of a pathetic tale, and deserves suitable attention. Stay tuned…

Baseball on the other hand was my strong point as a youth. I played rep ball for many years, most notably for Streetsville, whom at the time was the best team in Ontario by a country mile. In one season of 60+ games (we travelled A LOT) we allowed 1 single run scored against us. So yeah, we were badass.

Anyway, during this time I spent a couple of consecutive years attending a baseball camp in the Muskokas. It was a dedicated program with a regimented schedule of baseball training all day, every day, interspersed with bad meals and forced socializing…and this was roughly 27 years ago, so I was the only girl.

In my first year I excelled, and was a star of the camp; determined as I was to prove my worth as a girl who could be every bit as good as any stupid boy.

But then it sort of fell apart the second year. I couldn’t seem to do anything right. Confidence is a bitch at any age, and I’m sorry, but how would you deal as a 13 year old girl at boy camp?

The last day of camp was the annual awards ceremony, where the year before I had won “MVP”. This year however, I had to hold back tears as they announced me “Most Dedicated”.

“Most Dedicated”

Wait, let me repeat that again…

“Most Dedicated”. Ouch.

The reason I am writing this post now is that I was going through some boxes of old stuff, as one does, and I found my award. It’s a baseball, signed by the coaches, and oh yeah, several Blue Jay players that had rode onto the field in limos one day to surprise us, Tony Fernandez included! (why did I leave this major detail out the story until now… because I didn’t want you to lose focus of what’s important here).

Anyhoo, so I found the baseball, and showed it to my parents. My Dad laughed at me and my Mom debated the merits of “Most Dedicated” being a very important award that I should be proud of, blah, blah, blah (as Moms do).

Then I showed it to my teenage daughter; her reaction was simply this: “Oh, poor you”

So this is where I’m supposed to wish for something, and I suppose I could wish that I had received a better award that year, that I had performed to my potential and left everyone in awe of my incredible talent. But you know what I really wish… that I knew then what I know now… those teen boys must have been TERRIFIED of me. Bwahahahahaha!!!