In elementary school we had a very special week in P.E. One week out of the year, the rope would be lowered from the ceiling and we were given the opportunity to compete for extreme dominance through the rope climbing challenge (it wasn’t actually a challenge or a competition, but in my mind I had to be the top rope climber). This was my time to shine. I could maneuver a rope like a spider monkey can maneuver a tropical tree.
Every year our teacher would warn us not to slide down the rope. He would explain that such a choice would cause us to horribly disfigure our hands. “Sliding down the rope will cause rope burn. You don’t want to cut up your hands, so don’t slide down the rope!” Almost every year I listened. My last year at that school I did not heed his advice.
We had all already had our opportunity to climb the rope, but there was still time left in our class. So, the teacher let us have the option of playing various P.E. games or continue rope training. I’m a champion. Champions do not need to play games. Champions need to train to fend off future would be champions that won’t get the chance to be a champion because the champion is training to prevent this. So, I opted to continue honing my monkey-like climbing skills.
I powered up the rope a second time, and I heard the voice of my teacher in my head the whole time: “Don’t slide down the rope. Cristy, don’t slide. DON’T SLIDE!” As I progressed further and further up the rope, the advice became more and more meaningless. For some reason I was no longer able to distinguish the difference in allowing my legs to slide down the rope (which I regularly did) from allowing both my legs AND hands to slide down the rope (which I never did). I convinced myself that I had always allowed my hands to slide down the rope and there were never any consequences. “I just slid down the rope and my hands feel great, they feel better than great, they feel powerful!”
I began sliding.
Things were all right for about 2 seconds. Then things started to get painful, and shaky, and scary. How had everything gone from so great (being the best in the world at rope climbing) to so bad (skin melting off my hands due to hand against rope sliding heat production) so quickly? I began to panic, but I didn’t want to show any weakness.
It didn’t matter how well I was hiding my panic. My teacher began to panic “Stop sliding, Cristy!” My classmates began to panic “Stop sliding! Stop sliding!”
But it was too late. I was no longer able to remember how to use my hands. It was as if a tiny lumberjack climbed into my ear and severed the portion of my brain that knows how to tighten a fist from the portion of my brain that actually executes on that knowledge. I realized that I shouldn’t be sliding, but my hands refused to behave accordingly, partially due to the fact that the skin was all melt-y.
I hit the mat at the bottom of the rope with tremendous speed and hobbled around before catching my balance. I was horrified about what had just happened and almost didn’t want to look at my hands that were now pulsating with pain. I took a quick glance in the moment I had before my classmates gathered around. This is what I saw:
I didn’t want to show my hands to anyone. I acted like there was nothing wrong and asked my teacher if I could go to the bathroom, while holding back the pain induced tears building up in my wincing eyes. He wanted to see the damage and made me hold out my hands. No longer trusting my judgment, he sent another little girl to the bathroom with me to help sort out the messy stubs at the ends of my lifeless arms. I put them under the faucet in an attempt to get all the rope pieces out of the cuts, but quickly succumbed to the pain and decided to live with melt-y, rope-y hands.
When I got back to the gym, my teacher put band-aids all over my hands and I sat down to watch the other kids run around with their functioning bodies.
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