Small People on High Horses
Don’t fucking call me Tina. The name’s Tena. TEH-nuh. Like Jenna but with a “T”. I was lucky enough to be born to a seventeen-year-old who kept her legs open like she had something to dry. Not only was I terribly lucky, I was also an asshole. “Fifty-five hours!” Natalie cried out whenever she could make a conversation appropriate enough to talk about childbirth. “Fifty-five hours that little shit over there,” she’d always point at me with a poorly self-manicured finger, “sat where the sun don’t shine, taking her sweet ass time to make an entrance.” Ma would then say something about how the sun shined there all too often. Apparently in the delivery room, Dad made some comment about how “tenacious” of a baby I was, and whatever bone or organ that gave a person a bad idea churned in Natalie and she said, “That’s it. That’s the name of my first-born child.”
So here I am, nineteen years later on the eve of my first figure skating gold medal with a chip on my shoulder over a goddamn name. Tenacity. I started skating when I was five, and I was fucking terrible. Many athletes grew up with raw, natural-born talent. They were hunks of marble, sparkling and waiting to be carved into David. They were the unpainted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, unchiseled Venus de Milos, the light sources of Rembrandt and Caravaggio, the sketch of Mona Lisa’s smile. While the prodigies glided through their spiral and effortlessly landed their first waltz jumps, I fell on the ice, bruised on the ice, and cried on the ice. I was Holofernes’ sawed-off head – the head of Goliath, Jean the Baptist. But over the years, I worked hard. I fell, I bruised, I cried, until I made something of myself. It wasn’t so much that I was determined or resilient as it was that I was afraid. I owe my success to Ma’s belt, and how she always made sure to use the end with the buckle.
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Don’t fucking call me Tina. The name’s Tena. TEH-nuh. Like Jenna but with a “T”. I was lucky enough to be born to a seventeen-year-old who kept her legs open like she had something to dry. Not only was I terribly lucky, I was also an asshole. “Fifty-five hours!” Natalie cried out whenever she could make a conversation appropriate enough to talk about childbirth. “Fifty-five hours that little shit over there,” she’d always point at me with a poorly self-manicured finger, “sat where the sun don’t shine, taking her sweet ass time to make an entrance.” Ma would then say something about how the sun shined there all too often. Apparently in the delivery room, Dad made some comment about how “tenacious” of a baby I was, and whatever bone or organ that gave a person a bad idea churned in Natalie and she said, “That’s it. That’s the name of my first-born child.”
So here I am, nineteen years later on the eve of my first figure skating gold medal with a chip on my shoulder over a goddamn name. Tenacity. I started skating when I was five, and I was fucking terrible. Many athletes grew up with raw, natural-born talent. They were hunks of marble, sparkling and waiting to be carved into David. They were the unpainted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, unchiseled Venus de Milos, the light sources of Rembrandt and Caravaggio, the sketch of Mona Lisa’s smile. While the prodigies glided through their spiral and effortlessly landed their first waltz jumps, I fell on the ice, bruised on the ice, and cried on the ice. I was Holofernes’ sawed-off head – the head of Goliath, Jean the Baptist. But over the years, I worked hard. I fell, I bruised, I cried, until I made something of myself. It wasn’t so much that I was determined or resilient as it was that I was afraid. I owe my success to Ma’s belt, and how she always made sure to use the end with the buckle.
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