[the Writing of Kuypers]    [JanetKuypers.com]    [Bio]    [Poems]    [Prose]


The bad stuff that could be

When I was in grade school I couldn’t do gymnastics
the balance beam was even a weak spot
the teachers every year would try to get me to do it
and that made me wait to fail more and more
until I actually tried it and failed
I was a tall girl they had to give me a chair
so when I jumped to the
I don’t even know what they called those things
where you keep your head
over the bar and you hold yourself up
with your hands
I needed a chair so that I could make the jump
up to this bar so that I could fail, or rather,
so I could try
after all these years of not making this
exercise work for me, this one year
the gym teacher told me that since I was so
tall I shouldn’t jump higher, and then I wouldn’t
have to work so hard at succeeding at the next test
I did what she said, and she was right. It was the
first time I didn’t fail that gym test, all because
someone explained it to me in a way I could understand

there are people out there that want to learn
there are people out there that want to teach
but we all have to find the right way to do it
the right way to teach and learn, naturally


Copyright Janet Kuypers.
All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.

my hand to an anim of jkchair