Plog Number 319
The darkening of Gymnastics
Bonjour Ploggers, Comment ca va. I hope that you are good and happy. My advice is to take a little "me" time for yourselves. Pamper yourselves in whatever way you like. I just went and got my nails💅 done. There is a luxury nail shop near my house and they do nice work. I went there today and now I have conditioned hands and pretty pink nails. I don’t know how long the look will last but its giving pastel candy on my nails and it makes me happy. Your favorite form of pampering will make you😀 happy too.
I have been watching a lot of the Olympics. I indulge myself every four years when they come around. One of my favorites has always been the gymnastics. I remember watching them back when they were in Germany. I remember hearing the Olympic classic trumpet🎺🎶 song. But for sure I remember Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut. They were the🌠 stars of their day. They grabbed those bars and flung themselves back and forth and wowed the viewing public. I remember I had a friend named Carla Wade. She was involved in gymnastics as an elementary school aged girl. She traveled to Spencer Elementary and had lessons with Coach Vern Dietrich. I remember him. He was a jogging suit wearing strict gym teacher/coach type. He was on the stricter side in his persona. I remember asking Carla about her gymnastics lessons whenever I had a chance. She would tell me things and then kind of change the subject. She knew that I wanted to join the same group she was in. She kind of knew to stop short of telling me that I could go with her, even though we had been to each other’s houses and our parents knew each other. Meanwhile I was practicing somersaults, round offs and the splits. In my mind I was getting ready. Anyone who knew me as a child knows I was always doing cartwheels through our yard. If I needed to lose weight I would lose weight. I knew that I could do it. Then one day Carla leveled with me about Mr. Dietrich.
She told me that Mr. Dietrich was not the kind of person who would encourage me a rotund, girl of color to be in his class. I was stunned. She looked guilty about having to say it to me, but she did. I knew right then and there that I would never be a gymnast or even get to take lessons. At that point in time Gymnastics was a very white sport. There was no Simone Biles or Dominique Daws or Sunni Lee. There were only white Americans, white Russians and white Romanians. They were tiny and they flipped around and kept the order of things the way it was intended at that point.
But I knew that little black girls could run, jump, do somersaults and splits and more. I knew that we had the muscularity and strength to do it. I knew they just needed a chance and acceptance into a training program. That is a chance that I never got. I had buried that memory until this year while watching the Olympics. When my daughter was young we had her at Little Gym for years. She learned to do uneven bars, and balance beam and lots of tumbling. She enjoyed it but didn’t love it, but at least she had the chance to be involved and had the experience. Progress, I guess. RECLAIM!
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