My sister spits the dummy
My younger sister in NZ sent me this story by email this week. It deserves its place in the hyper-sun. She is in a marching team for older adherents. It's a bit of a family tradition. Our mother was a member of one in her 60s. If you have little or no experience of competition marching. It might go over your head. Be warned.
We had to be at the stadium by 9.30 in the morning and of course this in itself is a bit of a mission, trying to get 10 (older) woman organised to be somewhere on time!! It was made worse by the fact that nobody actually knew where the marching was. We eventually found the Police Station and one of us went in and asked where they thought the most reasonably expected place it would be, was. We got there about 09.40. Not bad for us.
We were on third, so nearly all of the teams who were participating were watching us. We had been practising a new plan that I wrote, but only for 8 weeks. It started off well and I was the "Stand in Leader". Somewhere after the 3rd movement one of the girls got lost and was wandering around the field trying to remember what her counts were. Three others chipped in to try and help her and they got lost as well. One of the others totally lost the plot and walked off the field.
By this time it looked like someone had taken a gang of senile inmates for a stroll, so I stopped the team ...Told them to get into line...Walked up the line and told each girl what movement we were up to ... Then said, "pull yourselves together." I started us off again and away we went and finished our plan.
I was so angry that they all avoided me for about an hour and a half. (My husband) had videoed it and when I watched it, the whole messy bit was only about 30 seconds long, but it felt like forever at the time.
We may not have won anything on the field, but we did win the best dressed prize that night at the 'do'. We went as toddlers...tantrums, dummies, bonnets, and all. So we did eventually have a good time.
We had to be at the stadium by 9.30 in the morning and of course this in itself is a bit of a mission, trying to get 10 (older) woman organised to be somewhere on time!! It was made worse by the fact that nobody actually knew where the marching was. We eventually found the Police Station and one of us went in and asked where they thought the most reasonably expected place it would be, was. We got there about 09.40. Not bad for us.
We were on third, so nearly all of the teams who were participating were watching us. We had been practising a new plan that I wrote, but only for 8 weeks. It started off well and I was the "Stand in Leader". Somewhere after the 3rd movement one of the girls got lost and was wandering around the field trying to remember what her counts were. Three others chipped in to try and help her and they got lost as well. One of the others totally lost the plot and walked off the field.
By this time it looked like someone had taken a gang of senile inmates for a stroll, so I stopped the team ...Told them to get into line...Walked up the line and told each girl what movement we were up to ... Then said, "pull yourselves together." I started us off again and away we went and finished our plan.
I was so angry that they all avoided me for about an hour and a half. (My husband) had videoed it and when I watched it, the whole messy bit was only about 30 seconds long, but it felt like forever at the time.
We may not have won anything on the field, but we did win the best dressed prize that night at the 'do'. We went as toddlers...tantrums, dummies, bonnets, and all. So we did eventually have a good time.
posted by Ennis @ 8:11 pm
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