I AM that Crazy Lady

Last week I was called a warrior, a champion, and a trailblazer. Amy Vodarek of Insight Edge shared a LinkedIn post about her podcast episode that I guested on.

Her post generated more than 30 comments offering congratulations and support for our discussion about child sexual abuse prevention. That’s where the accolades came from.

What a tremendous ego boost!

If you haven’t already listened to our conversation, you can listen here. If you’re on LinkedIn, you can find Amy Vodareks post and offer a ‘like’.

As with any feel-good event, there is an inevitable ‘hang over’.

I was feeling successful and appreciated when the memory of being ‘that crazy lady’ came back to me.

I guess my feeling of success created the capacity I needed to tolerate some shame. Maybe even transform it.

This is another basketball story.

All three of my kids have played community basketball. In Nova Scotia, there is an annual end-of-season jamboree for under 10-year-old players.

The jamboree takes place at the Canada Games Centre in Halifax. It’s a massive complex with 6 basketball courts in one enormous room.

There are about one thousand teams and one million spectators. At least, that’s what it feels like during the jamboree.

Pure chaos.

Players, parents, coaches, tournament organizers and facility employees are coming and going. Whistles are blowing at all times. Bleachers are full. Empty spaces are filled with teams waiting to get on the courts as soon as the games end. Coaches are carrying bags of balls and kids are dragging their indoor shoes and waterbottles while parents are wrangling siblings.

Did I mention the feeling of chaos? We won’t get into the mayhem in the parking lot.

Now that the stage is set, let me invite you into the gym where I was sitting on a bleacher (lucky to have a seat) watching a girls’ game that was happening on the court where one of my kids was going to be playing soon.

One end of this court was closest to the entrance/exit of the gym. Teams who would be playing next were piling into the space.

A group of boys (under 10-year-olds) with basketballs were standing around at the end of the court where this girls’ game was in progress.

Half time. Whistle blown. Girls run to their coaches.

The boys at the end of the court run out to take some shots while the game is paused. That’s pretty normal.

The game plays on and the crowd is thicker. The boys are standing off-court behind the basket. They are getting crowded and they start moving onto the court for extra space.

I’m watching a girls’ game getting squeezed off the court by a bunch of boys. The young female players are now dodging boys who are standing on the court.

I am appalled. This is not normal.

I see adults standing around, but none of them are paying attention to the fact that these boys are now obstructing a game that is in play.

So, I do what seems right.

I climb over top of the parents and kids who, like me, are lucky to have a seat on the bleachers. I squeeze through the inattentive crowd and I walk right up to the group of boys and I walk them off the court.

I address them, and I’m looking around for adults who might take responsibility for these kids, and I conjure my best authoritarian voice to remind them that a game is in progress, and they should find some other place to stand around and bounce their basketballs because they need to stay off the court.

I look around at the adults in the vicinity and most of them are looking away. Busy in conversations, yelling over the noise, looking for missing teammates.

After clearly instructing the boys to keep off the court, I turn away from the kids and squeeze through the crowd and climb back up the bleachers to my seat.

A whistle is blown and the game on the court is paused. The girls run to their benches.

The boys at the end of the court run out and start shooting.

The game resumes, and the boys reluctantly move away from the net.

But then I watch as the events in the girls’ game draws the players to the other end of the court, and the boys take the opportunity to rush onto the court and start taking shots… while the girls’ game is in progress!!! (I could use a lot more exclamation points here).

I am furious. This is the poorest sport etiquette I have ever witnessed. Running onto a court to take practice shots when a game is in progress??? I have never seen this happen before in all of my years playing, coaching and watching basketball.

I look and there is no adult paying attention.

There was no time to clamber down and ask the boys to step off the court.

I did what seemed logical and essential. Also instinctual.

I dug down deep and used the fuel of generations of gender inequality to project my voice so that my words would reach those kids,

“GET OFF THE COURT”

I felt like wonderwoman, champion of girls' rights, defender of female participation in sports.

But that was definitely NOT what the people sitting around me saw.

While I felt like a superhero ready to save the day, the crowd looked at me like I was drinking and smoking in public while shouting obscenities at children.

A crazy lady.

I felt it in my soul. Somehow, my attempt to protect this game from being obstructed by a group of boys was wrong.

I felt the shame of making everyone around me uncomfortable.

I wasn’t wrong when I said that no other adults were paying attention. They really weren’t. I was looking for adults who were watching what was happening, and I didn’t see any.

So when I yelled ‘get off the court’, no one around me expected my outburst or understood the context.

They just saw a crazy lady.

And maybe I was being a bit ‘crazy’. Maybe it should have been handled better. Maybe I could have responded in a way that didn’t leave me feeling embarrassed and humiliated.

But that was then.

Today I am a warrior. A champion. A trailblazer. Defending the rights of children!

In that gym, on that day, I responded to a problem that no one else was noticing. And that made me look 'crazy' to the people around me. It made them uncomfortable. And I felt embarrassed because my outburst was perceived to be inappropriate.

How that experience was perceived by those around me was strongly influenced by the fact that they did NOT notice the problem.

They didn't notice the group of boys stepping onto the court and taking shots while the game was in progress.

I took action to resolve a problem that the other spectators did not recognize.

Nobody around me would have called me a warrior, a champion or a trailblazer. That's not who they saw.

I am so grateful for all of the people who speak up about childhood sexual abuse. You are helping draw attention to the problem occurring right in front of us.

When people recognize the problem, that helps normalize the actions we are taking to prevent childhood sexual abuse.

Sometimes the difference between seeing a trailblazer, or a 'crazy lady', is the ability to identify that a problem is occurring.

So, thank you to all the courageous people who make social media posts about child sexual abuse, share posts about this topic, and have conversations about prevention.

We are doing the work. We are transforming our prevention efforts from being perceived as inappropriate, to being appreciated.

That's a feel-good shift.

###

Join us in our effort to eradicate child sexual abuse. Sign up for our Prevention Gazette Newsletter to find out about upcoming events, opportunities and resources.