The Quiet Ones Surprise You
When my daughter Em was in middle school, she was a cheerleader. And she only signed up to do that because our school offered two winter sports—cheering and basketball.
She seemed to have inherited my bad genes, which cover an overall lack of height and inability to shoot a basket. So, she did cheering. Mostly because of gymnastics. She wanted to show off her back tucks or at least get to do them somewhere that's not our kitchen.
Because she was so small, she was a flyer. That's the person who goes way up high, held up by other tiny children and then twists around or cradles down into their arms. The first time she did it at the game, I tried not to gasp and to remember to breathe. But ... she was really, really good.
Then something weird happened.
Her coach came up to me and said, "I never imagined your daughter would be such a daredevil."
I thought of all her tree leaping, rock climbing stunts at home and said, "Yeah, well she is."
The coach shook her head and said, "She's such a quiet little thing. Who would of thought it?"
"She's just not showy,” I said.
"She's a little daredevil though, but such a good girl," the coach said, shoving popcorn into her mouth, which if I digress, is totally unfair since the cheerleaders aren't allowed to eat it because it's not a healthy enough snack! AGGH!!!
That’s not the point here. The point is why people always think the quiet, polite kids are afraid? Why do they think the super smart kids like Em don’t ever have the desire for a dopamine rush, for pushing themselves into new places, to go to stunt camp and learn how to jump off buildings or rolling ATVs.
When Em grew up, she went to Harvard and Dartmouth and Harvard again. She was not a legacy. We were not rich. Seriously. At one point the roof in our apartment collapsed on us. People weren’t surprised by that. They were, however, surprised she went into the army after college, that she was field artillery, that it paid for her graduate school. She came from a house that never had a gun in it.
She is always surprising these people because she’s refusing to conform to what they think she should be. She is quiet but brave. She is smart but wants to do things that aren’t considered intellectual.
We are all like Em, I think. We all can find ways to be all the things we want to be, surprise people and their notions of us—maybe even surprise ourselves and our notion of us.
And on one final note in this blog, which is starting to sound like a boring mass Christmas letter, I read today that the longest underwater kiss is 29 seconds. You'd think it could be longer. I think everyone should grab their significant other (or if unattached, a good looking stranger off the street (as long as they consent), or household pet if all else fails) and stick our heads in the bathtub, upside down, and see how long we can last. It has to be longer than 29 seconds.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “The only journey is the one within,” which seems true-ish, but that journey within also is reflected in the one outside of us, the choices we make, the values we hold, the ways we challenge and embrace ourselves and others.
The quiet ones sometimes surprise us in very good ways. Maybe it’s time we surprise ourselves, too. Do something a bit contrary to our normal habits, talk to someone who isn’t the typical person we talk to, walk the opposite way through the grocery story even. Who knows? It might be life-changing in a good way.