When I Beat the Pressure

National Blog Posting Month – January 2014 – Pressure

Prompt – Tell us about a time when you didn’t bend to peer pressure, and you swam against the stream.

——

Does it count the time that my friend and I went and tried out for our high school football team? (I’ll point out here, in case you’re not aware, that I’m female, and so is my friend.) OK, we just went to the introductory meeting, were told that women couldn’t participate, and didn’t try any harder than that. Still, we went. We tried, albeit half-heartedly. No doubt the coaching staff was glad to see us leave. We knew them, too. I’m sure they hadn’t expected to see us that night.

A football player from the University of Utah encouraged us to do it. He told us that we could probably do well at wide receiver. We knew him from the weight room at our high school. He’d use it for his own training, and we were there frequently working out as well.

See, we were serious. We weren’t girly girls.

I’ve never been afraid to sweat. Never been afraid of a hard workout.

Naw, they didn’t even give us a chance. They should have let us try. Really, we might have backed out pretty quickly anyway. Those guys were big, and I weighed a whopping 110lbs at the time.

I guess maybe that’s one of the many reasons I’ve now found myself with a sword in my hand. A great equalizer.