I've never really dealt with the pure horror and shame of being not only picked "last" for PE team activities, but-- worse, being dealt as a "trade" when the sporty kids were doing the picking.
Yes, as in;
"Well, since you got
SportyDude, I think that you should take Howler and DisabledGirl as a handicap for your team..."
Yes, I also had/have highly hypermobile joints, and dislocations were a regular thing in playing soccer, but I guess the good news is that I never tore any ligaments, nor have I ever broken any bones-- and this in spite of considerable klutziness. My balance and proprioception were always excellent, by the way-- so I think that was the key to avoiding injury for me personally.
I do like walking and hiking, and enjoy dancing as well. In my younger years, I enjoyed tumbling, gymnastics and marching band a lot. But most sport is simply not for me and never has been. Anything with a bat, ball, or racquet is a recipe for humiliation and frustration (at a minimum).
My current spouse didn't believe that ANYONE could be "that bad" at softball. He and another sporty friend tried desperately to teach me some measure of proficiency when we were graduate students (I was 22 at the time)-- and while I was
delighted because I finally seemed to be able to CATCH a ball in a mitt-- and actually make contact when swinging a bat at a slow pitch...
it was clear from their response that my "massive improvement" was still leaving me at a place of such horrifying ineptitude relative to "normal" people that I should, um-- cheer from the sidelines. Period. It was hard to realize that my best-- improvement I'd been thrilled with, actually-- still left me so bad at something other people do for leisure. I joke that I'm not "non-athletic" but more like "anti-sport-- like anti-matter, but different." Still, I was pretty ashamed, and I was 22. Golf, rowing, and sailing I'm okay at. I was also decent at skiing (both alpine and Nordic) last I checked.
I was good with animals, too. Horseback riding, perhaps? I couldn't, being too allergic, but it's a good thing for some non-athletic kids.
