My life as a teenage cheerleader and other awkward stories…

So, I was a geek growing up. Let’s see – red hair, cut into a mullet no less, braces, a mother who liked us to be ‘original’. She was an artist, not a hippie, but didn’t want us to conform. She sent me to my primary school Halloween social dressed as a witch doctor. I just wanted to be a witch, with a black wig, a broomstick, green face paint and a wart on my nose!!

I was a bit of a loner in primary school. I wasn’t great at sports so stuck to swimming and gymnastics. I spent every lunchtime in the library and only had friends cause they wanted to sit next to me in maths and cheat off my tests (I always got 100%).

I actually remember in the last few months of primary school a group of girls in the year below me (there were only 9 people in my year at my school so most of my friends were younger than me), they decided they needed to make me ‘cooler’ before I went off to Intermediate. They gave me a nickname (Jazzy) told me what I should wear, advised me to grow my hair and then disappeared out of my life for a year before they reappeared at Intermediate with me.

I got my braces off less than a month into Intermediate and set about growing my hair out and kept going with the gymnastics and swimming. I was still a geek. Still spent most lunch times in the library. I had an accident in Form 2 (I was 12yrs old) where I fell off the roof of my house and fractured my spine, permanently dislocated my AC joint in my shoulder and slipped a couple of discs in my neck. 

Apparently when my teacher told my class, my best friend started crying and one of the guys started laughing. When I got back to school in a neck brace, one of the girls in my class planted her foot in my stomach and pulled my hair – I screamed until the teacher dragged her off me. All I did was rest my books on her desk while I shut mine.

It was about this time I started chatting on IRC, I met all sorts of interesting people online and in person and that is so another story for another blog.

I got to high school, an all girls school. Looking back I was probably the skinnest I’ve ever been but I felt fat, I starved myself for several months until a friend started inviting me around and cooking me dinner – one thing I won’t do is refuse to eat a meal that has been cooked for me by someone I love, my mum bought me up right! 

I started making friends in High School – we were all in little cliques. There were the geeks (my friends from Intermediate) who hung out in the economics room during lunch. The beach barbies, the ‘homies’ and the sluts…. I split my time between the geeks and the sluts and so set the pattern for the rest of my life so far!!

In third form along with two other friends I became a cheerleader for the Hawkes Bay Hawks basketball team. This was right around when Paul Henare started his basketball career outside of school (claim to fame – we went to primary school together lol!). We wore white leotards with high necks and long sleeves, shiny dance tights with white slouch socks and black sneaks, black frills at the legs of the leotard and the words Tararua Milk written across our breasts. We had to stand at the door and hand out flavoured milk. I was 16 and men are perverts hahahaha!

I was also lucky to have a neighbour with a son about my age. All my friends thought he was hot and I thought all of HIS friends were hot – many years of me being cool ensued because I could get my friends into his parties lol.

I still was and still am a complete geek. But I’ve grown into the role… I have another side to myself. It’s back to high school with the sluts and the geeks. I think I’ll be following this blog up with one on my time in Australia and another on being a published author of a few short stories… you’ll get the relevance to this paragraph when you read them…

Always leave your audience wanting more!