The summer I turned athletic

Bless the people who "made me" athletic

The April after my freshman year of college, I moved to San Diego to take a summer EMT class, work, and stay with my aunt. My sister had spent a glamorous summer there previously, and in true younger sister fashion, it was my duty to follow in her footsteps and get myself a glammy SoCal summer.

My sister was in Brazil for an 18-month church mission which meant that the kids’ car—a red, air-conditionless, mostly reliable, stick-shift 1989 Toyota Tercel hatchback car in which we fit NINE teenagers one school morning—was mine, all mine. Zippy car packed to the gills, I made my first solo trip to California, pushing the speed limits of The Tercel and greatly exceeding the posted speed limits.

A summer job near my summer abode in Talmage would have been ideal. Life is not always ideal. Instead of a hotel desk job near my aunt’s, I eventually found a temporary office job in a downtown San Diego (not close) real estate office in the Gaslamp District.

Southern California has a reputation for its traffic, and by Day Two of my air-conditionless commute, participation in this iconic tradition had lost all its luster. Shifting between first, second, and third gears only to have hopes dashed of making it to even fourth gear quickly got demoralizing. Fifth gear and speeds over 40 m.p.h were distant, happy memories.

However, the halting commute wasn’t the worst part of the job. That no one talked to me was. I was just a faceless “temp” doing seemingly meaningless work. In their defense though, the only thing I remember about that job is that my work involved a computer. Like every self-help book recommends, I lived for my life outside work. My aunt and I had loads of fun together, and I had been plugged immediately into a huge group of friends through church.

Even though it was not her first rodeo with a social, visiting niece, my aunt was impressed by how quickly my calendar filled with activities. “You have made more friends than I’ve made in my years living here” she said after a week or two. It was true. Church made it really easy to meet young adults in similar situations. Most of us were interested in dating and wanted to be where our dating prospects were which was not online since that was still new. Also, we were all in the still-baking stage of life. Personality traits and character defects which would eventually solidify into socially-repellant ones by mid-life—monologuing, arrogance, self-absorption, flakiness—were more tolerable in the “baby chick stage” of the late teens and twenties making me, for one, not very choosy about who I spent my time with. There were plenty of good ones in the bunch, including Toni, my best girl friend that summer, and Scott, my summer crush. Neither one had or has a last name since we were young.

I was young, I was fun, I was there for a good time. Also for the EMT class, but that didn’t start for several weeks. Unlike my job where temp status meant “ignore her,” in this singles scene, my limited-time-offer status created a novelty about me. Like the Peppermint Chip Milkshake at Chick-fil-A or the salted caramel hot chocolate you used to be able to get at Starbucks only in the fall, we like the things we can’t get all the time.

Seasonal beverages.

Being in town just for the summer, and there for an EMT class made me more exotic than I really am. That and dumb luck had starring roles in my initial and accidental rise to heights of athleticism previously unknown.

Ultimate frisbee was a sport I’d played casually back in Utah, but to no acclaim. I’d developed a decent throw during scores of adolescent hours spent throwing a frisbee with my dad on the unmanicured back half of our half acre. My agility had been honed as well since this frisbee throwing involved avoiding ankle-wrenching gopher holes while running for catches. Still, I was just your average frisbee player.

Given that I was older and taller by a lot than every other kid on the team, I should’ve been a standout on the Little League team I joined with my brother Parley and cousins Isaac and Ben. Instead, I was a perfectly vanilla player.

Hours and hours poured into ice hockey as a family should’ve made me great at it. It didn’t. The most memorable thing I did in hockey was get hit in the shin as a teenager by a puck Isaac slapped hard. I sported a dented shin for years.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I had been a below-to-perfectly average athlete in every sport. Until Summer 2001.

This singles group played ultimate frisbee a lot. For them, it was a 2001 version of pickleball—all the rage. Some of these games sprung up at or after other activities. Other activities were dedicated to the endeavor of ultimate frisbee. Not the entire group played, some came to socialize and cheer us on. At that point, I was approximately a 6.1 on the 1-to-10 scale of athleticism. I threw with more confidence than most girls (no offense), could generally keep up with running, follow the rules, and didn’t make too many mistakes.

At my first ultimate frisbee game in San Diego, though, I played like I’d never played before. I caught throws from teammates effortlessly, and intercepted throws of my opponents. My throws were precise and smart. Normally flustered by aggressive guarding, I was unfazed this time. My long blonde hair flowed behind me as my tan body ran, gazelle-like, up and down the field. Okay, I might be getting carried away; no one has ever accused me of possessing the grace of a gazelle. But the rest of it was true. It was unusual, and I felt really cool.

We played at another activity, and once again, I played abnormally well. This continued at multiple other activities. I was getting a reputation, one I didn’t deserve but was very much enjoying. I remember players on the opposing team hollering to each other, “Who’s got Emily?!” and my own team yelling “Emily’s open!” I suddenly felt even taller than I am,¹ and like an 8.5 or 9 on the sports spectrum. I was, for the first time in my life, apparently an athletic threat, and I liked it.

At another activity, “Athletic Emily” was invited to join a game of basketball. You should know that until that point, my basketball experiences ranged from abject failure to lackluster. This is sad as it’s my dad’s great love. We kids should’ve been great given the effort Dad poured into our talent development. Holiday and Saturday mornings along with some lunch breaks were spent at our local church doing drills. He and I did passing and dribbling drills on the ten-foot-long sidewalk in front of our Star Lane house.

We played half- and full-court games with immediate and extended family. A match-up between our family and the ever-stylish Clarks at an MSU Bobcat basketball game—they won the game as well as the un-awarded award for Best Dressed Team—was an embarrassment for me at least. Two years of middle school basketball at Chief Joseph Middle School (Go Eagles!) can only be described as lackluster. Between the two seasons, I scored only two points and fouled one person. At one point, I was hit in the back of the head when I broke away early after the other team’s failed shot on the basket, and sprinted to the other end of the court. My plan? Get available for a long pass and an early shot on our basket. My teammate had the same idea, but when she passed the ball to me, I had not yet turned around to receive it, and was hit in the back of my head by the basketball. Looking over my shoulder would’ve been a good idea.

But that evening in San Diego, I played basketball way beyond my abilities. With an athletic reputation to uphold, I darted and shot and guarded and passed in dazzling ways. Multiple guys asked, “Did you play college ball?” I felt bad for them and good for me when I informed them I’d only played middle school ball. If I’d fully appreciated at the time just what high praise the question was, I would’ve kissed the askers.

It had to have been luck and the alignment of Jupiter and Mercury which made me more athletic than usual at that first activity. Then this group of friends’ positive assessment of me turned me athletic for all future San Diego athletic games. Bless them. It seems like these nice SoCal people believed in my athleticism so much that I decided I might as well too.

After two months of this athletic fun, I made a critical discovery which kept my athletic head from getting too big. I probably should’ve learned before I ever moved to California for an EMT class that the California EMT curriculum didn’t transfer to Utah. But there was a course starting back in my Utah college town within a week. The glamorous, social SoCal summer was cut short, and I loaded my things back up in The Tercel.

Goodbyes were said to Tia, Toni, Scott and the rest of the gang, and I drove the twelve hours in temperatures WELL over 100°F. My homemade air-conditioning consisted of frozen water bottles in my lap, and spritzing myself with a water bottle. The wind tunnel created by driving 90 m.p.h with both windows down accomplished some pathetic evaporative cooling effect which was slightly better than nothing. Somehow I could still hear Shania Twain’s “I Have Been Blessed” blaring from my CD player.

Around Death Valley, Nevada, I stopped at a gas station. Not for gas, but to go inside and remember what it felt like to be cool and to get a non-optional cold drink. Once back in the car, I seriously contemplated writing a farewell note to my family in case the heat did literally kill me. My disappointment about leaving San Diego and my athletic endeavors prematurely, and these sobering thoughts of my possible death were softened by another thought, though. As tragic as my young death in the desert of Nevada would be, at least I’d be memorialized by my San Diego friends in a glamorous way I didn’t really deserve: “She was really athletic.”

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Isn’t life cool, and aren’t people interesting? See you in the next one…

1. For more about my height complex (at 5’9” I’m the short one in my family), read this: