Wear sneakers and bring a change of underwear

          Tomorrow is our company’s annual outing. I have been looking forward to it with a certain amount of dread. The events of the day are a super-secret surprise but we have been told to wear comfortable clothes and sneakers. I have received a T-shirt to wear. It indicates that I am on the blue team. This frightens me because of the obvious threat of athletic games. Someone at work asked me if I didn’t care for athletics or if I weren't good at them. I told her that I don’t like them because I am not good at them. I have very poor hand-eye coordination and running gives me a painful, dry feeling in my esophagus. I fear people seeing me all day involved in competitive sports because, as my college roommates liked to remind me, I “run funny”. Also, I have poor reflexes. You can ask my friend Avi who takes delight in throwing things like Nerf balls at my face in public to prove the fact further. Events like this tend to remind me of how I was always picked last in gym class in elementary school and of how I was again picked last when I was a camp counselor for staff dodge-ball… at the age of twenty. (I was on the music staff). My fear of being the Woody Allen of the company is so palpable that my colleagues who have been here longer have assured me that there will most likely be trivia portions of the day and/or a scavenger hunt.

          This is the one time I regret not still working in the suburbs where the people of my company were generally older and larger. At last year’s company outing I played several rounds of Bingo, painted a piece of pottery, and laid in the sun for an hour while HR panicked at our having run out of activities. My hydrangea bowl garnered the attention of all the middle-aged ladies of the company and when it returned from the kiln, there was a high amount of viewing traffic at my desk. But now I work with people with actual degrees in art so even if we have a similar component I will be screwed. Can’t there be a “Singing 19th century German art song” portion of the day?

          It seems that all those lectures on how to throw and catch after day camp have only produced more anxiety. My dad would practice with me and analyze my every sports-related endeavor, as Dads will do. But my complete disdain for any problem that could not be solved intuitively ultimately got in the way of my success on the field. (See also: math and my inability to add. But that’s another blogpost for another day). I recall enjoying “Woodbridge Recreation” when I was younger. But the older we got, the more sports started to replace arts and crafts activities. I have a lot of memories surrounding the dropping of balls and skinning of knees and the ensuing humiliation and fighting back of tears. I do also remember however, that on my last day of camp for the summer one year, after many weeks of failure in the outfield of tennis-racket-baseball, I finally caught a fly ball. I remember the exhilaration of winning that game and the feeling of finally having my teammates' support and approval after a summer-long struggle with my coordination. The next day I told my parents that I did not wish to return to Woodbridge Rec anymore. Even at age eleven I knew to exit on a high note. I just didn’t think that at twenty-seven I would have to worry about this particular brand of performance anxiety anymore. I still have to find my only pair of sneakers. Wish me luck tomorrow.