How Ghost School prepared me for weightlifting

How Ghost School prepared me for weightlifting




Do you have a white sheet?
Yes.

Can you emit mysterious, spooky sounds?
Yes.

Can you fly?
Yes.

Mrs. Smith looked up from the
Ghost School applications.

“So, Miss Kathrin, you can fly?”
Heads went up.
“Yes. A little bit.”
“Let’s see you fly right now, then.”
They started to sense the joke.
“Well, I need like a running start,
and something to jump off of, like a chair.”
“I want to see you fly. Come on, fly around the room, right now.”

Everybody laughed.

…

When I got home, I asked Ma what “gullible” meant.
It meant no Ghost School.

. . .

But I knew the grip of space
in the instant I tipped off a chair,
or charged off a hill
and leapt –
into air –
touching nothing at all.

For that instant
before gravity called me down

I flew,

and I knew that with the right training,
like a Ghost School could give me,
I could hone this moment,
learn how to catch that pause,
turn up from that dip toward the ground
and keep flying –
a little farther,
a little farther,
until I could lift off the ground from nothing,
veer up and hover
at the ceiling
like I did in dreams.

That was worth sleeping for.

. . .

I hoped Mrs. Smith was wrong,
that somehow the Ghost School people
would pick up those forms from school
and call my parents,
and send for me,
and we could get the training going.

But Halloween passed, and I never
heard anything else about it.

. . .

For a while I walked
underwater in my dreams,
breathing just like on land.
That was worth sleeping, too,
but no match for flying.
The best were the rare times
when I knew I was dreaming, but I could still
do it,
and soared to the top of the room,
over unsuspecting heads
and out into the sky.
. . .

I found that moment
again
30 years later
in my living room
when I stood on the hardwood floor
before the computer screen
and clean and jerked
my preacher bar with its small metal plates,
like the tiny, animated weightlifter avatar.

This was worth waking for.

Now I chase it
on the platform.
Pull,
Shrug,
Clean,
Dip,
Drive –
I throw my feet apart,
and for an instant,
touching nothing at all,

I fly.

Photos: Sundown gate by me; Chip Conrad competing at Tommy Kono Open V by Allyson Goble