// Something to do with wanting to be a cheerleader…//

It was around the time where Bring It On had come out and the whole school had watched it numerous times – I for one rented it on my birthday and watched it 20 times. At this time I was in middle school, not really sure what year, but I am guessing one of the last couple of years of it. (So I was 12/13?)

A lot of the ‘popular’ girls wanted to start a cheerleading squad and I had heard about it on the not so discrete grapevine. The teacher that would be running it would be my cool English teacher who had been on gladiators and was a ‘proper’ athlete… and who all the boys had a huge crush on.

I loved dancing from a young age, though one ballet report did say I danced like an elephant… I’ve always been a heavy walker and my shoes can get ruined in 2 weeks which is very bad for my wallet and my time as I am the most picky when it comes to buying clothes – though no one would really say I have fashion sense.

Anyways, I bought some pom-poms and decided to gatecrash the cheerleading club. It was very classily held in the girls changing room that was worse for wear and to say the least tiny. 15 of the schools most ‘popular’ girls – including the annoying ones from the year below – and then a sub-group of 10 ‘not-so-popular-but-the-boys-still-date-them’ were crammed into this room and we’re all there shaking our pom-poms and not really doing gymnastics.

It was either the very first session or the second when a few of the girls went up to the teacher and were like ‘what is SHE doing here?’ – pointing their overly manicured tweenage fingers at me. ‘She’s here for what the rest of you are here for?’ she replied. ‘Well we don’t want her here… !’ I tell you these girls weren’t discrete. Basically the argument went on for quite a while, before they gave up and huffed back to their places to carry on the mediocre routine…

It’s fair to say we never went to nationals as the club disbanded pretty quickly.