Being The Last One Chosen

I have always been terrible at every sport.

Can’t catch a ball,

Kick or throw one

I have never had

The necessary hand-to-eye coordination

Maybe it was because when I was toddling young

I had a terrible case of measles

That slowed the growth of my left eye

Maybe

Maybe it was because

In infant school

I was excused from games out on the playing fields

Because I couldn’t stand out there

For more than a minute

Before collapsing into a

Sneezy, snuffling

Teary

Bespectacled wreck.

So every summer term was spent

In the school library

With Mark Adams

Who taught me how to swear

And his asthma, which meant

We read all the Enid Blytons, away from the flowers

The Fives and the Sevens and the Mysteries and the Adventures

With fat-shaming Frederick Algernon Trotteville

And Timmy the Dog

And Uncle Quentin

(Never got into Mallory Towers)

Anyway

Back to sport

There is no single worst moment

In my relationship with ball games

Every moment was equally toe-curling

The loping chase to catch the ball and

Despite being right under it

And missing

To raised, disgusted hands and rolling eyes

Swiping at the ball in rounders

Once, twice, three times

Then out at first base

The humiliating whoosh of the corky

As it speeds by my impotent bat

And knocks the bails from their precarious perch

The cocksure boys with brand new boots

And the latest Wednesday kit

Who said

‘Me and him, we work together like a pair of legs

And you, you’re the prick in the middle.’

The tedious, eye-smarting inevitability

Of being the last one chosen

And the stinging accusations of not trying

But I was, every time I was trying

But me and sports

Were never friends

Never even on nodding terms

Unlike being booted out of Big Brother

When Davina said

You’re on Channel Four

Please do not swear

And here are your best bits

Not like that at all

When you’re no good at games

It’s a continuing compilation

Of all the worst bits

The most mortifying morsels

Every

Single

One