My mom called me a late bloomer because I didn’t hit puberty until I was about 15. I started high school at 4’11, weighing less than 100 pounds when dripping wet, but that wasn’t the issue… I was bouncing off my bedroom walls, driving my siblings crazy, cause… I didn’t know what to do with myself… I wasn’t a religious guy, but I prayed to God I could find an activity that would give me some passion and purpose…

Then I found this picture of my dad, when he was my age, doing a handstand at the beach. He looked so buff and happy… It was a sign! So I went out for the high school gymnastics team, and become “an all-around man,” meaning I competed in rings, parallel bars, pommel horse, high bar, vault, floor ex. Maybe if I trained hard enough, and prayed hard enough, I could make it to the Olympics.

Coach Gale took notice of my potential and drive. Before long, he was picking me up at 7:00 am, to do a work-out before school, and driving me home after practice at six. And for the first time in my life, I had focus, discipline, and a sense of belonging.

During practice, I wore a t-shirt, along with my PE shorts. They were bright yellow and way too big for me. My mom wanted ‘em to last all four years of high school. Hopefully my growth spurt was right around the corner. The other thing that boy athletes wore… was a jock strap. If you’ve never seen one of these… contraptions, they’re all snug where your junk is, with two straps that go around the back of your legs, …but there’s no material covering your butt. This whole late-blooming thing was really awkward… especially in the locker room.

At the Conference Meet of my freshman year, I got to wear a varsity uniform and compete with juniors and seniors who could grow full beards and do tricks with so many flips and turns, they looked like a blur. I couldn’t do those tricks, but I looked pretty good in that yellow lycra shirt. After a year of gymnastics, my body was getting ripped. I held my arms out wide like a gunslinger because of my cobra-like lats.

Anyway, I happened to be the first one to master a “vault” on high bar, and Coach Gale made a big deal of this trick. On a Friday afternoon, he called the boys and girls teams together to give me some props. That was the custom when someone learned a new trick. Chalk up my hands, swing one giant around the bar… turn my body sideways, release my hands as I fly over the bar. Yes… I made a successful re-grab… but my baggy shorts got caught between my hands and the high bar, and they were shredded on the way down… My naked butt… and child-sized jock strap were completely exposed… There was hysterical laughing, vicious pointing, that went on and on… This was not a wardrobe malfunction. That term hadn’t been invented yet. This was a wardrobe catastrophe.

I don’t know how long I hung there, my shorts fluttering above my head like a tattered flag… The problem was, there was a basketball game taking place in the adjacent gym. I had to make it through the crowd to get to the locker room so I could get my street clothes.

Eventually, I released my grip and landed on one of those blue and tan folding matts; I grabbed it and erected a little fort around me. God knows what Coach Gale was doing. No one was helping me… I was stuck in a padded fortress, surrounded by 30 lyrcra-clad gawkers. Finally, Lisa Hussey tossed me a pair of ratty sweatpants that’d been lying in the corner of the gym. Lisa Hussey! Now there’s no way I could ask her to the spring dance. I knew exactly what she could never unsee… I slipped inside those sweats like a butterfly squeezing back into its chrysalis. Then, I walked causally to the locker room, without looking back. I wanted to keep walking and walking… but I was in my socks, and those sweatpants smelled really bad.

Over the weekend, I modified my prayers: Hey God, forget the Olympics. Who cares about that? Can you just erase some of the memories around here? Yeah I definitely dazzled my fellow gymnasts; but thankfully, there were no cell phones or TikTok back in the day, or I’m sure I’d have gone viral, my mortifying moment preserved for eternity.

On Monday afternoon, I strolled into practice wearing a new pair of gym shorts that actually fit me. Inside of ‘em… I was rocking a pair tighty-whities… Not only was I finding my own style, getting comfortable in my own skin, but I like to think I was contributing to the demise… of the jockstrap.