You know how it is… You wake up from a terrible nightmare, sitting bolt upright in bed, heart pounding, clutching your blankets, hoping that the axe-wielding murderer isn’t still chasing you or that your car didn’t crash over the cliff after all. I had this experience a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn’t a murderer or terrifying car crash that invaded my sleeping subconscious. Nope. I was having a vivid, horrible nightmare that I was a cheerleader.
Clearly, I’m not currently a cheerleader, unless you’re counting
the kind that chauffeur their kid to a gazillion sporting events. I’m way too
old to be the tiny-skirt-wearing, pom-pom shaking type. I mean, I’ll go to a
hot yoga class half-naked (pre-pandemic, of course) and I’m 99% confident that
I could bust a move as well as the Phoenix Suns dancers that I saw at a game a
couple of years ago, but I can’t imagine a scenario where it would happen, in
public, on the sidelines of an athletic competition, at this point in my life.
Despite all reassurances of logic and reality, the terror of my
nightmare stuck with me throughout the day. I am most certainly not a
cheerleader now, and I would say the risk of me becoming a cheerleader any time
in the future is akin to being struck by lightening or winning the lottery, but
what about the past? Had I ever been a cheerleader? I didn’t think so, but I
had to admit, there was a niggling doubt.
I delved into the depths of my history – or at least dug through
a bunch of old photos – and my shocking discovery took me on a trip down memory
lane into my brief cheer-leading past.
Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate….
Well, here you have it, photographic evidence that I was indeed
a cheerleader. The weird arm pose is somewhere between reluctant cheerleader
and aspiring body builder, but I think we can all agree that the stick-thin
limbs, coupled with the itty-bitty skirt point toward the former. My memories
of this are fuzzy and elusive – much like a dream I’m trying too hard to
remember, but I think I spent one season cheering for a junior football league
of some sort when we lived in Arizona. My favorite part about this photo is
that I’m wearing my beloved red Snoopy watch. Bonus points for anyone who can
figure out what brand of sneakers I’m wearing. I can’t tell. Some long-defunct
‘70s label?
Another chapter in my apparently storied cheer-leading history. (I’m the one with the bright blond pigtails.)
This gem was taken at “Mini Cheer Summer Camp” in 1980 (as the
t-shirts indicate), and while the memories the former photo sparked are murky
at best, these came rushing back, crystal clear.
The highlight of cheer camp for me was the pom-poms. If I close
my eyes, I can still see, hear, and feel them. They seemed so enormous and
glamorous. They were black and gold (the high school colors) and they made such
a happy noise when shaken. I’m talking about big, round ‘70s pom-poms; not the
sad little nubby ones you see these days that barely poke out of the cheerleaders’
hands. These babies were a rare commodity and highly in-demand. I think
each camp participant got dumb little pretend pom-poms made of cheap crepe
paper, but the big, fluffy, crinkly, REAL ones . . . there were only seven or
eight pairs of those in existence and they belonged to the super cool,
sophisticated members of the high school cheer-leading team, who were also our
camp teachers.
At the end of each camp day, the cheerleaders gathered all the kids
in the gym and gave awards. Each cheerleader picked a camper who
had shown the most “spirit” (whatever that means) or who had learned a cheer particularly
well or who had perfected a dance routine, and that lucky little girl’s reward
was taking a set of pom-poms home for the WHOLE night! It was almost too
wonderful to be believed. I KILLED myself every day trying to win the pom-poms. Oh,
how I wanted to feel them in my hands, to hear that faint crinkly, swishing
noise when I shook them. Finally, several days into the camp, my dream came
true. And I didn’t get just anyone’s pom-poms – I got Shannon’s
pom-poms. She was my favorite. She seemed beautiful and cool and
impossibly glamorous, and I was blessed with possession of her pom-poms for a
whole 15+ hours! I was so happy, I couldn’t stop smiling. I didn’t
let go of the pom-poms all night. I shook them to my heart’s
content. I danced with them and cheered with them, and took them to bed
with me. I spent the whole evening creating choreography that was
specifically designed to make the most of the pom-poms.
As if winning the pom-poms wasn’t fantastic enough, there was
also a bonus prize. When you won the pom-poms, you also got that cheerleader’s
“spirit stick.” I thought that maybe spirit sticks were unique to where I grew
up or were just a 70’s thing, but a quick Google search proved me wrong.
According to my internet research, the spirit stick tradition
was born at a National Cheerleaders Association camp sometime in the mid-20th
century. Over the course of the camp, one team stood out from the rest. They
couldn’t jump, or stunt, or tumble as well as the other teams, but their positive
attitude and spirit promoted enthusiasm and unity among all the camp
participants. Their scores wouldn't land them in the winner's circle, but Lawrence
"Herkie" Herkimer (cheer-leading innovator and pom-pom patent
holder!!!), wanted to acknowledge their efforts in a special way. With such
short notice, he didn't have many options, so he cut a branch off a tree,
painted it and allowed it to dry in his garage. He presented the stick to the
team as a "spirit stick" to honor the attitude and enthusiasm that
the team embodied.
Wow. This guy really knew how to give a special award. “Hey, um,
you kind of suck, but because of your great attitude and everything, I cut this
stick off a tree and put some left-over paint on it. Enjoy.” Next time you’re
lecturing your kids about the lameness of participation awards, you can tell
them, “Look, when I was a kid, we didn’t get a trophy just for participating.
No, we got a gnarled, broken-ass stick.”
Despite the humble and, let’s face it, lame origins of the
spirit stick, the stick clearly stuck. Now there are many options for
purchasing commercially manufactured spirit sticks, or you can get crafty and
make your own to put old Herkie’s DIY job to shame.
A glitzy, modern version
of the spirit stick.
The spirit sticks at my Mini Cheer Camp were large pieces of
dowel that were about a foot long. They were painted gold with black
stripes on the end and they had the cheerleader’s name on them. Other than
serving as an award for effort and a perky cheerleader attitude, I’m not sure
what the spirit sticks were used for. I think we were supposed to yell and
scream and “show lots of spirit” when the cheerleaders held them in the air. I imagine
they used them in the same manner in their official cheerleader capacity at
games.
Does this gang of spirit
stick wielding cheerleaders inspire you to cheer for your team or run for your
life?
In my mind, the spirit sticks paled in comparison to the
pom-poms, but the cool thing about the spirit sticks was that, on the last day
of camp, each cheerleader picked one “overall best” girl who won that
cheerleader’s spirit stick and got to keep it FOREVER. They must have
made new ones for themselves each fall. Or maybe their pot-smoking
boyfriends made them in between designing and building new bongs in wood shop. It
was the end of the ‘70's after all. Anyway, the last day of camp rolled around
and I was a nervous wreck wondering if I would win a spirit stick. I knew I
would be in the running, since I was one of the daily pom-pom winners. The
awards process seemed to take forever. The suspense with each name they called
was excruciatingly painful. At long last, the ever-cool Shannon called my name!
I could hardly believe it! It was the best summer ever. I treasured
that spirit stick with the black block letters that spelled S-H-A-N-N-O-N for at
least the rest of the summer. I have no idea what ever happened to it, or
Shannon for that matter.
If only I had been able to keep the pom-poms instead, I truly
would have cherished them forever and the arc of reality could have been
altered. Like the Chaos Theory’s Butterfly Effect where a butterfly flapping
its wings on one side of the world causes a hurricane on another, small changes
in initial conditions can lead to drastic changes in results. Maybe I would
have leaned cheerleader instead of dancer? Maybe the Seattle Mariners would
have played in a World Series. Maybe they would have even won?! Maybe the
Russians wouldn’t have influenced the 2016 election? Who knows the power of pom-poms?
At the very least, I could be having very different nightmares.
