"Superstar!"

I recently had an e-mail asking me my most embarrassing moment. While it could possibly be a toss-up because I've done many embarrassing things in my life, I'm pretty certain that it would have to be my Senior year of high school when I did back handsprings into the ENTIRE Gatorade table.

Let's start at the very beginning...a very good place to start....

At one time, I was a cheerleader. And before that, I was what you might loosely call "a gymnast". I'm not gonna lie, I had nothin' on Shawn Johnson, but I could do a few tricks. My Senior year of HS I suffered a pretty bad lower back injury that sent me to the hospital because I literally could.not.move. Walking hurt, sitting hurt, standing hurt, breathing hurt, living hurt. It was awful. I did some rehab and took cortisone shots and muscle relaxers and finally got to the point where I could attempt to tumble again, but I couldn't "completely leave the ground" meaning back flips or anything where all of my body weight would come down at one time. This limited me to back handsprings.

Insert our first varsity football game of my senior year....we were playing an away game. We were doing some silly cheer where each cheerleader takes a turn doing a tumbling pass. It was my turn, it was a timeout, all eyes were on me...literally...I'm not exaggerating, and I start my string of back handsprings. This was not a new trick. I could do back handsprings in.my.sleep. It was literally like walking, only this time I decided to make things interesting. I guess I started going crooked because of my back, I have no idea, but I started going crooked nonetheless. Apparently people were yelling and screaming for me to stop, but no no. Not this girl. I was going to flip-flop until the cows came home....or until I hit the Gatorade table...whichever came first. And I can tell you which one came first....

You guessed it....BOOM! There was a collective GASP from everyone in the stadium as I literally took my legs out of the Gatorade bucket and noticed the blood running down my right shin. I'm sure I thought to myself, "I'm so freaking cool right now...NOT!" The only thing I could think to do was look up into the crowd and say, "SUPERSTAR!" I then got a huge laugh and cheer and I think my mom took off her photo button at that point not wanting to be identified. I pretty much never lived that one down.

In parent skits at the end of the year my dad even donned a cheerleading outfit and acted out my infamous moment of glory. He tore his meniscus. That's what you get for making fun of people. :)