If you’ve known me a while, you’ll think this title strange. I’ve had some funny, memorable, and irritating run-ins with cheerleaders in the past. I won’t dwell on them, but briefly a few incidents involved rather archaic high school traditions and several more involved me attempting to do track workouts while also playing bowling-with-cheerleader-as-pins. Even so, inside, I’m really a cheerleader.
See, in four days, the madness commences. Freshfolk will be moving into their lovely and some less-lovely dorms. They will cry and they will scream. We will smile and we will lift their boxes. I got boxes lifted for me three years ago, and lifted others’ the year after, and now I am back a third time to lift and smile even more knowingly than I could before.
You might think I dislike the whole process. We start moving boxes when the nighttime chill hasn’t yet left campus and continue through lunch time. We begin with overeager, over-early parents and move on to the laggard throughout they day. We are shackled by our red “I’d love to help” shirts. I love to help.
I don’t like to consider myself an inhibited person. Inhibition is not a feminist principle. But I am as awkward as the rest of them, maybe more. I often can’t find the right words to say (unless I’m running, obviously), and I’m not good with crowds, though I’d like to be. I don’t have a knack for hosting, teaching, or improvisation (or parallel structure). I admire oratory cleverness and can’t claim to have it.
But on move-in day, I’ve got all the answers and smiles and none of my inhibition in sight. Something about the adrenaline and heavy lifting perhaps, it makes me a wonderful conversationalist. I make small talk about closets and mini-fridges and big talk about classes and college life. I deftly move from one family to the next, reassuring and helping in a million capacities.
I wish I could say that this is energy I can tap into at all times–this not-quite-pep, this zing. I can’t, though. It’s part of me that only emerges in small doses and at particular times. It is channeled by the magic of move-in. I can only wait for another occasion full of such vibrancy, when I can be a bit of a cheerleader. For now, I’ll look forward to Tuesday.
Posted on September 11, 2010
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