Clumsiness not ‘just a stage’
Ahhh, Nadia...
For an embarrassing number of
years, I idolized Nadia Comaneci. I
know why; it was that damn made
for-TV movie that seemed to run
every Sunday afternoon of my
childhood.
It told the Romanian gymnast’s
story, from her rise as a pigtailed
ingenue, to her descent into Western
decadence (boyfriends and banana
split binges), to her eventual
comeback.
Ahhh, Nadia ... in her cute
Romanian leotard, tumbling through
the floor exercises, charming the
Olympic judges. I wanted to be her.
Every time I watched that movie, I
would spend the rest of the after
noon practicing somersaults and
standing on my head until the living
room spun.
And then came 1984. The
Summer Olympics. The year the
Reds stayed home and Mary Lou
Retton kicked global butt.
For the first and only time in my
life, I watched every televised
minute of an entire Olympic event.
Mary Lou (with Nadia’s coach, the
great, gruff Bela Karolyi) was so
cute, so graceful, so springy.
Oh, how I wanted to be her. I
wanted my face on a Wheaties box.
I wanted to do battery commercials.
I wanted to be dubbed “America’s
sweetheart.”
Only one thing stood between me
and gymnastics stardom.
OK, a couple of things. First,
Bela would never take me, and even
if he would, my mom couldn’t
afford the lessons.
I stumble up stairs. I tumble
down. I drop things. I spill things. I
rip and tear and step on things. I
fall, fall, fall.
Imagine if TV’s Lucy and Jerry
Lewis’ Nutty Professor spawned a
love child. Imagine that child trying
to make her way through life with
two left feel and 10 thumbs.
That child will never grow to be
Rainbow Rowell
7 am often (well, not
often, but I have been)
asked why I have never
taken up a sport. Ha, I
reply. Life is a sport, and
walking is my most
challenging event. ”
America’s sweetheart. That child’s
face will never grace the front of a
Wheaties box.
That child will instead make her
way through life with constantly
scabbed knees and bruised shins.
That child will walk into glass'
doors. She will stick her straw up
her nose when she sips her milk. She
will learn to endure — even laugh at
— cruel comments like “Walk
much?” “Have a nice trip, see you
next fall” and “Geez, you’re a
buffoon.”
That child (me, you dumbhead)
will never, ever vault her way to
fame.
Like my mother, I always hoped I
would grow out of it, that I would
eventually mature into a cat-like
creature. I thought that if I tried hard
enough, I would learn to walk like a
soft summer breeze.
But I never did.
Instead life unfolded before me, a
rugged terrain of tripwires and tiger
pits.
I am often (well, not often, but I
have been) asked why I have never
taken up a sport. Ha, I reply. Life is
a sport, and walking is my most
challenging event.
I have been advised to pay more
attention to walking. And I have
tried. For about a week, every time I
walked I would watch my feet and
whisper, “Right, left. Right left.” I
would be careful to lift them high —
to avoid potential stumbling blocks.
And I didn’t trip. Instead I ran
into walls, pillars, doorjambs and
perfect strangers (even imperfect
strangers).
I have pretty much come to terms
with my clumsiness now. I no longer
try to be something I am not — a
fully functioning biped.
Instead, I work on damage
control. I look for safer ways and
places to fall. Like Nadia and Mary
Lou, I know the importance of a
good landing. When possible, I try
not to carry hot liquids.
When I do fall —and I do fall —
I try to handle the situation in such a
way that no one gets too embar
rassed. Watching a grown woman
fall can be visually painful for
innocent bystanders. Best to smile,
wave away those who stop to help
and make a gently self-deprecating
remark.
“Show’s over folks, move along.”
Finally, I take pleasure in small
victories.
A day that I get through my
classes and into my room without
tripping is a day for celebration.
If I can make it through the week
without opening a cabinet door into
my face, bring out the bubbly — it’s
like a national holiday.
An exciting national holiday, like
the Fourth of July, not Presidents’
Day.
Rowell is a senior news-editorial, adver
tising and English major and the Daily
Nebraskan managing editor.
LSD shines on one bright day
The first time I ever dropped acid
was a colossal failure. Colossal,
because double: I didn’t get off—
and my girlfriend, Daisy, did.
It was Daisy, after all, who’d
administered the sacrament —
placed the tiny paper on my tongue,
instructing me not to swallow, to let
it dissolve in my mouth.
But the dose was months old,
saved for a special occasion, and the
delicate chemical, so fragile to begin
with, had deteriorated past the point
of effectiveness.
ror me, oui noi ior uaisy.
I spent the next eight hours, then,
with a woman who insisted on
breathing in rhythm with the
wallpaper.
For whom the most fascinating
thing in the world was watching
cigarette smoke change color on its
winding journey to the ceiling.
Who talked incessantly for hours
— and then wanted to run home to
bed.
And all I felt was sort of
grouchy, a little wired, like I’d
gulped six cups of coffee in rapid
succession.
It wasn’t until the second (and
last) time I indulged in a taste of the
lysergic that I got to experience the
more traditional “trip.”
It was the Fourth of July (I won’t
say which year) and I wandered out
under the Fireworks display at
Holmes Lake like a supplicant.
The experience was already
waning for me when I saw the
smoky trails of extinguished star
bursts — large, gray, cottony
dandelions gone to seed — as
weightless but enormous brains
drifting low over the assembled
crowd, their neural nets a visible
structure against the hematite sky.
See? I was tripping out.
I was in another dimension.
I was freaked.
Like, gone, man.
Earlier in the day I had discov
ered the devil in a lamp post,
watched the pulse of color throb
along a canary’s throat, viewed an
excruciating episode of “Dynasty”
Mark Baldridge
"LSD, for me, strung a
thousand pearls of
intuition on the
necklace of one, bright
summer day. ”
(nobody here but us corpses!),
realized I’d never thrown a frisbee
properly — and set out to do it right,
and recognized all my friends and
the odd people I encountered for
what they really were — the
beautiful wise apes of the Garden of
Eden.
In that order.
And there was more, much more
— too much to write down.
And through it all I tried, when I
could speak, to convey to those
around me the content of my
visions. I attempted to make a
translation from that realm to this
one by means of words. I think I
was at least partially successful —
in any case, no one ever told me
later that I was boring.
It’s not that I imagined, then or
now, that what I was experiencing
was so terribly profound.
I spent that time the way I spend
a lot of my free time — thinking
about things.
I mean really, I’m a geek, what
could be simpler?
But I’m good at it and that’s
something; I’m used to odd realiza
tions — little flashes of intuition
about anything and everything. No
matter how useless the information,
I enjoy such moments.
And this was really no different,
except in degree. LSD, for me,
strung a thousand pearls of intuition
on the necklace of one, bright
summer day.
a 4_ii_x i_
/a uay liiai aim giuwa wiui uiai
same light in my memory of it.
I never felt drunk — the stupor
that comes with alcohol or mari
juana was absent from this experi
ence. In fact, I felt fine, clear
headed, lucid — in the old sense of
the word. I felt full of light.
There were times, of course,
when I forgot myself. When my
sense of self became detached from
my own awareness and the eye
became all that was left of “I.”
I can see no other way in which
the drug could possibly have harmed
me: I haven’t become a heroin
addict since. I do not eat human
flesh.
But the person who gave me the
drug, the person who transported it
to Lincoln, the person who made it
in a dubious lab, and even I myself
could each have been arrested at our
various points of contact with a
substance some would call danger
ous or even wicked.
It puzzles me.
I would never recommend to
anyone that they try any drug — I
am no doctor, after all.
But I cannot understand the fear
and hatred some people exhibit
towards these psychedelic drugs.
Why should they care what I do
with my free time? It’s my life, I
spend it this way.
And in among the rubbish of
days I can barely remember — of
tired thoughts grown weary by
repetition — that one day stands out
in my life like a jewel.
I’d like to go back there some
day.
Baldridge Is a senior English major and
the Opinion page editor for the Dally Ne
braskan.
guests
Emily Poulsen
Zoe TriantafiUou
Freedom to choose
keeps women safe
Choice is one of the fundamen
tal rights guaranteed to citizens by
the United States Constitution.
This choice also includes allow
ing women the right to reproduc
tive freedom.
The decision to terminate a preg
nancy is one of the most difficult
choices a person could make in
their lifetime. Rosie Jimenez was
one of the people who had to make
such a choice. October 26, 1995
marks the anniversary of the death
of Rosie Jimenez, and the third
National Young Woman’s Day of
Action.
Rosie was three months away
from receiving her college degree,
and a single mother of a 5-year-old.
When she became pregnant for the
second time, she decided that it
would best for herself, and her child,
to have an abortion.
She could not afford a legal abor
tion in a private clinic so she went
to a “back-alley” doctor where she
later died of septicemia, blood poi
soning.
In her pocket was a $700 college
scholarship check that she would
not use for an abortion in a private
clinic: she refused to abandon her
education and her future.
Thursday is a day that requires
every person to know the rights,
facts and obligations that come with
abortion. This is a day when we
need to focus on every person’s
right to choice, regardless of color,
religion or economics.
How many more women will
have to die as Rosie did because of
a lack of funds and belligerent com
munities?
Many people may remember
reading articles in the Lincoln and
Omaha newspapers regarding a
younggirl being kidnapped by Blair
police to prevent her from having
an abortion.
The facts of this case are that the
girl had not even consulted with her
physician and was considering sev
eral alternatives, such as adoption,
abortion or keeping the baby. When
the young man, the father, heard
that abortion was a possibility, he
was infuriated. Eventually, the preg
nant girl was taken from her own
home by the police, to prevent her
from having an abortion.
When the girl did see her own
doctor, he advised her that abortion
was not a viable option because she
was too far along in her pregnancy.
Now the young girl is a mother of a
healthy baby.
In the state of Nebraska, minors
must have parental or a legal
guardian’s permission before an
abortion can take place.
There is also a wait period of 48
hours after the parent or guardian
has been notified.
If the teenage mother does not
Illegal abortions
accounted for 17
percent of deaths of
women who were
pregnant in 1965.
Since 1985, deaths
during legal abortions
have decreased to 0.4
per 100,000, an eight
fold decrease.
wish to tell a guardian she can ob
tain a judicial waiver. The lather of
the baby does not have to be in
formed of abortion, but it is highly
recommended.
So the young father of the baby
in the case referred to above had no
legal right to say whether or not the
young woman should have the abor
tion.
Since abortion was legalized in
1973, it has saved the lives of mil
lions of women who would have
otherwi se gone to drastic and deadly
measures to end their pregnancy.
Illegal abortions accounted for
17 percent of deaths of women who
were pregnant in 1965.
For all you Husker
Fans and players,
having a safe legal
abortion is much safer
than playing football
with a 1 in 25,000
chance of death per
year.
Since 1985, deaths during legal
abortions have decreased to 0.4 per
100,000, an eight-fold decrease.
For all you Husker Fans and
players, having a safe legal abor
tion is much safer than playing foot
ball with a 1 in 25,000 chance of
death per year.
Students for Choice is an orga
nization on campus that helps stu
dents be informed and speak out
about the pro-choice movement.
On October 26, Students for
Choice will be holding a rally in
front of Broyhill Fountain to honor
Rosie Jimenez and all other young
women in the fight to provide safe,
legal and affordable abortions.
(All references cited above were
collected from Planned Parenthood
of Lincoln).
TriantafUlou Is a freshman journal
ism major
Poalsen Is a senior environmental
studies major
BE OUR GUEST
The Daily Nebraskan will present a guest columnist each Monday.
Writers from the university and community are welcome.
Must have strong writing skills and something to say.
Contact Mark Baldridge c/o the Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska
Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588.
Or by phone at (402)-472-1782.