Pole Dancing & Soccer

I want to start right now by saying... I am not and never have been a pole dancer. This is important for you to know.

(Play Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" for the best efffect while reading this post...)

Who knew that helping some little girls at soccer pratice learn to do cartwheels could turn into a career possibility? (notice I did say could - not would!) Stranger things have happened, I guess.

While we were working on cartwheels, one of the sweet, darling girls said, "I wish I could do the splits. Diana, could YOU do the splits when you were a little girl?" I should have stopped there, I guess. I should have said, "Nope, not me!" Instead I said, "I can still do the splits." (Mistake #2 - yes I know you don't know what #1 was yet. Be patient.) After which began the pleading and begging for me to actually DO the splits - right there on the soccer field for all to see. I caved. When I thought the fewest people would be looking, I did the splits for them. (Mistake #3) It was over in a few seconds - I was back on my feet acting like nothing had ever happened. Whew.

During this time, most of the other mothers who had stayed at practice were walking... being productive and exercising. (here is Mistake #1 - I SHOULD have been with them! This would have prevented this whole fiasco AND I would have burned some calories!) As soon as these mothers finished walking and sat back down - these traitorious little girls ran to them and said, "Diana can do the splits!!! She showed us!" ...much to the amusement of their mothers. After refusing to do it again for them to see, I thought it was all over...no one saw.

Flash forward to last night at soccer practice. One of the other mothers (who was not present last week) says to me, "I hear you can do the splits?" WHAT??? How did SHE know? Her son probably didn't see me - he was practicing. Oh no... maybe her husband? He's one of the coaches. Damn...forgot about the coaches. I tried to explain that I was just playing "gymnastics" with the little girls... blah blah blah. (OK - I have to say RIGHT NOW, though, that this mother is a dear friend of mine and one of the sweetest and funniest people I know... other wise you might get the wrong impression of her.) Her next comment was, "How did you learn to do the splits? Was it previous job experience?" We laughed and laughed. THEN she said, "We should take a picture of you doing the splits and post it on Facebook! That would be so fun!" Gasp... what? I replied, "Ummm... I have quite a few Fraternity guys from my college days who are my FB friends. I don't think that is such a good idea...I can just imagine what they would say." This degenerated into a whole conversation of possible comments from the frat boys... culminating with the possbility that I was a pole dancer while in college. We all laughed until our sides hurt... I LOVE soccer practices like that! It's amazing the friendships that are forged while watching your children run laps. I do want to clear one thing up, though:

I was NOT a pole dancer in college.

Although... if someone had told me I could make a lot of money doing the splits on poles and dancing to Def Leppard... I might have considered it. I was not very good at thinking about future consequences at that time of my life...so who knows what I would have done. hee hee...