The Glowing Edge

Tag: girls

  • From 5 to 50: Celebrating Boxing Women

    From 5 to 50: Celebrating Boxing Women

    It’s International Women’s Day, and two very interesting things are on my mind.

    The first is this awesome video of a 5 year old girl working the pads with style and power.

    I wish I had more information about her, but I know this: someone, somewhere, has exposed her to boxing and has allowed and encouraged her to build up formidable skill for one so young. You don’t get this good at pads by showing up at the gym a time or two; this is passion and practice, and no 5 year old gets here unless there are some adults supporting it.

    It makes me feel incredible to think that very young women, and not just young men, are being shown the possibilities for their sport — and that those possibilities include boxing.

    In the same way, I salute all the remarkable young women who will compete in the first-ever female division of boxing in the Olympics this year. Here are links to the first two sets of women in line for that honor: Olympic Trials Winners and National Championship Winners.

    Congratulations on being such an incredible part of boxing history! Sorry it took so long.

    The second thing on my mind is the upcoming match between two world-champion boxing icons, Christy Martin (49-6, 31 KOs) and Mia St. John (46-11, 18 KOs).

    For Christy, age 43, this is a chance to secure not only the 50th win of her incredible career and the World Boxing Council (WBC) World Super Welterweight Belt, but also a chance to show the world that the violent stabbing and shooting attack of her ex-husband Jim in 2010 was not the final word the world would hear from Christy.

    For Mia, age 44, this fight is a chance to claim the win that eluded her 10 years ago when she was 26-1-1, and battled Christy through a 10-round war for the WBC world championship. That fight finally secured the world’s attention for Mia, and definitively proved her power and worth in the boxing world. She expects to redeem that loss against Christy and secure the final win of her career.

    On June 19th, 2012, in the highly-acclaimed and long-awaited Final Victory fight, Martin and St. John will box for the last time, and the winner will take home the World Boxing Council (WBC) World Super Welterweight Belt.

    Here’s a video of rounds 2-5 of their last fight for you to enjoy…

    Here’s to boxing girls and women, from 5 to 50 (and forgive me, Mia and Christy, for stretching the ages for the sake of a blog post title!).

    Stay strong and keep swinging.

  • The Maker on Stilts

    The Maker on Stilts

    Summer’s here and The Maker, nearly eleven, has an entire raft of projects underway.

    Recently he disappeared for most of an afternoon and came home walking on these fantastic stilts that he made with his grandpa.

    Me: Dude! Those are awesome!

    TM: Thanks.

    Me: How long did it take you to learn to walk on them?

    TM: Three or four tries.

    Me: How tall are they?

    TM: The brace is eighteen inches.

    Me: So what do you plan to do on them??

    TM: Probably get past the creek to places I haven’t been.

    Me: Oh. (thinking for a moment) Where haven’t you been?

    TM: Past the creek.

    Me: Well, right. Of course. So you can wade across the creek on those things?

    TM: Sure.

    Me: Can you go up stairs?

    TM: Yup.

    Me: What can’t you do on your stilts?

    TM: Kick a soccer ball. And I can’t do “no hands” but I can do “one hand.” I hold one stilt in my hand and the other in my elbow pit.

    Me: Do you think girls will like your new stilts?

    TM: (uninterested) Sure.

    Naturally I commandeered the new stilts for my own turn. None of the boys believed I would get up on the first try, but they didn’t know I had spent half my growing up years on stilts.

    Stilts!

  • The Girl Effect

    Thanks to Megan Heuter and her blog Because I Played Sports, I finally saw this incredible advocacy campaign called the Girl Effect.

    In Kenya, 1.6 million girls are high school dropouts. If they could finish their secondary education, they would make 30% more money – and contribute $3.2 billion to the Kenyan economy every year.

    Or, they could become one of Kenya’s 204,000 adolescent mothers instead, and lose the economy $500 million a year.

    A three billion upside against a half billion downside.

    There are 600 million overlooked adolescent girls around the globe, and less than two cents of every international aid dollar is directed to them. The girls are overlooked because they are home caring for babies and the elderly, or handling cooking, washing and other chores for the family. They are less likely than boys to be in school (70% of out-of-school youth worldwide are girls), they are married and giving birth as children (pregnancy is the leading cause of death among girls ages 15-19 worldwide), and they are at disproportionately higher risk for HIV infection. All while they are still teenagers.

    The point is not that we need to start new programs for girls. There are plenty of successful ones already in place, and the Nike Foundation, in collaboration with the United Nations Foundation and the Coalition for Adolescent Girls are working to gather national attention to support them.

    I hope you’ll take the time to watch the video, click through to the site, and download the fact sheets. And definitely think of these girls this holiday season; think of them so often that you can’t wait to be a part of the team that is supporting them.

    Here’s to the power of girls to change the world.

  • New Boxer Aims for 2016 Olympics

    New Boxer Aims for 2016 Olympics

    This is probably one of the most exciting things I have had the honor of doing recently. A few weeks ago a young girl came to the gym and told Bonnie that she wanted to compete. She is nine years old. Her father brought her every time the boxing team met and she worked her heart out. And on our regular sparring night she had her new gloves (purchased specially in a small size to fit her hands) and was ready to get in the ring.

    She listened intently to our coach calling her punches and she threw each one with ferocity and determination. Her eyes never left me. Jab, right, step to the right. Jab, jab. I kept my hands still and let her see what it felt like to punch. I crouched down so she could aim for my face.

    It was an incredible experience, watching her throw those jabs. I had to bite my mouthguard to keep from grinning. All of us felt it, I think; the excitement of watching a brand new, very young boxer launch her dream.

    It’s a long road from here to the 2016 Olympics, but at least one small heart has marked the path.

  • Twilight Didn’t Do It For Me

    Twilight Didn’t Do It For Me

    When I was in school the only book we ever passed around was Judy Blume’s Wifey, which had sex scenes. We shared the novel furtively, like we were slipping over a nickel bag of pot; no one knew who owned it — the same dog-eared copy must have passed through the locker of every female in 8th grade.

    So imagine my surprise when the First brought home a honking doorstopper of a book which — get this — a girl had loaned him. No sex in the entire thing, either. You guessed it, it was Twilight.

    I tried to engage with the Twilight phenomenon, I really did. But it clearly wasn’t written for me so I returned the 4-pound hardback (the First had read it in a flash) and back it went to the girl who convinced him to read it in the first place. (She soon sent home boat anchor number two in the series.)

    Recently my nine-year-old son was loaned a copy of the Twilight movie by a girl on his bus. (What is it with girls today?) I figured the movie would be more accessible, so last night I sat on the couch with all three of my boys and watched the first half.

    Two things:

    1. There’s nothing interesting about these vampires. Yes, Eddie-boy is brooding and beautiful (I actually like the Jacob character more), but that isn’t enough to carry the film. Plus, the girl has one expression, rather like Elijah Wood’s Frodo in the LOTR series. Boy do I ever get tired of that same look.

    2. There’s nothing interesting about these special effects. Let me tell you who rocks the effects: Chow Yun Fat films and their like. You know, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Curse of the Golden Flower, Hero, House of Flying Daggers and all the others. Dude, ninja-types get me totally jacked up, how they can balance on a perfect autumn leaf in mid-air while their robes billow about them and their sword gleams. Epic. These vampires have a little bit of super speed, but CYF and his crew would kick their vampire butts in any show-down, any day, no question.

    So. I’ll finish watching it with the boys tonight, but I ain’t expecting much. Feel free to weigh in and convince me otherwise. Did you like it? Why or why not?

  • First Dance

    The color is called Green Grind

    The Ice has just started public school and his first school dance was a week or so ago. In order to get ready, he got his ear pierced, then we had to shop for the perfect shade of green hair dye (Green Grind, by Color Fiend, available at Hot Topic).

    When I asked him if he was going to ask a girl to the dance, he sighed and explained his problem. Apparently there are (were — this was more than a week ago, and things move quickly in middle school land) FIVE girls who like him, and he didn’t want to risk offending any of them.

    “So what are you gonna do??” I inquired.
    “I’m just gonna go by myself and talk to all of them,” he told me.
    “Okay, but I don’t know if that will work. You may be in for a rough day after,” I said.

    But he seemed willing to take the risk.

    And it worked! They all came, they all loved his hair (don’t think they noticed his earring), and he talked with each of them. He even danced the Cupid Shuffle, he said, and it went great.

    I can’t tell you how relieved I feel.

  • Because it’s Easier to NAME the Band than BE the Band

    Because it’s Easier to NAME the Band than BE the Band

    I recently came across a much folded, notated, starred, scratched out, and circled sheet of notebook paper with the Ice’s name at the top. I left all the spellings exactly as they are.

    List of some cool made up band names

    (circled and starred)
    rage at sunset – nine stars, and signed “by Katie”
    college zombies – three stars

    (circled)
    strictly violent, strictly untamed, strictly untameable, strictly prohibited, toxic violence, pieces of _________, jarred ________, roaring shadows, shut down, untapped power, untamed power, sharp anger

    (not circled or starred)
    spiked, infested, infected, clash, create, prowler, prohibited, untameable, toxic, violence, broken, jammed, thermostat, pieces, starrz, innoscent, criminalized, sharpen, sharpened, symbolized, amplified, amplify

    My comments: I suspect “rage at sunset” received nine stars because girls get more votes than boys, especially really nice, really cute, very attentive neighborhood girls. I have to say that “college zombies” is not going to work for long. What if the Stones had named themselves “The College Stones” or worse, “The Middle School Stones”? Kiss of death.

    Now. The Clash and Prowler are taken, but nice try. I’m also not a big fan of Infected, but then again, I’m a mom who carries antimicrobial hand wash in her glove compartment. All the “strictly’s” are fine, but I have to say that my favorite is the somewhat enigmatic “Jarred _____.” Jarred as in canned, like pickles, or jarred as in collided or bumped? And I’m just dying to know what’s in the blank! Jarred okra? Jarred expectations? Jarred teeth? Oh, the possibilities!

    Image credit: chatirygirl on Flickr

  • Report: First Week of Public School (or: girls, food, and fire)

    I asked the First, first time public-schooler and seventh-grader, for the lowdown on his first week of school. The report falls into three categories: girls, food, and fire.

    1. Girls. They have some cute ones there.

    Mom: So do these cute girls know your name?
    First: Yes.
    (long silence)
    Mom (once it’s clear no more information will arrive unsolicited): Do they sit by you in class?
    First: No. We have assigned seats.
    Mom: Bummer.
    (short silence)
    Mom: Is it a bummer?
    First: Nah. It’s okay.
    Mom: Oh. Okay.

    2. Lunch. They offer it there, and it’s pretty much about eating.

    First: Lunch is good, you can sit anywhere you want.
    Mom: If you are in the lunch room with no one to sit with, what do you do?
    First: I invite people to sit with me.
    Mom: Wow! You invite strangers to sit with you?
    First: No, I invite people I’ve met.
    Mom: So do you ever make new friends at lunch?
    First: No, you make new friends at the lockers.
    Mom: Oh.

    3. Fire. Where the real education began.

    Mom: What was the strangest thing about this week?
    First: The fire drill.
    Mom: A fire drill the first week of class, woo-hoo! You get to get out of class… Why was it so strange?
    First: Well, when they first told us we were going to have one, I thought they meant we were all going to run out of the building as fast as we could. But what they actually made us do was line up at the door and walk out very quietly. It was weird.
    Mom: Hm, I didn’t realize we had missed that in our homeschool curriculum, but I guess we did.

  • why boys need fathers

    Me: Ask me any question about girls and I’ll tell you the answer.
    The Maker (instantly): Why can’t boys slap girls?
    Me: Uhhh…
    The Maker (clarifying): ‘Cause girls can slap girls. And girls can slap boys. But boys can’t slap girls. Boys are only supposed to hit other boys.
    Me (stumped): Ask your father.
    The Maker (recovering immediately): Ok, then why do most girls like long hair and most boys like short?
    Me: Umm… Hm. Perhaps you have an easier one?
    The Maker (obligingly): Sure. Why do most girls like Barbies and most boys don’t?
    Me (uttering a silent prayer of thanksgiving): Easy! TV. All the commercials for Barbies are for girls, and they show Barbies doing girlie things. If they would just make some Barbie commercials showing her transforming into a robot or riding a dirt bike in the X games, boys would like ’em. (continuing, euphoric) Ask me another marketing question!

  • meeting david

    When I was three years old we moved to the place where I did most of my growing up. I can remember riding in the clear-plastic-covered back seat of the realtor’s car to see the new house. As we drove up, a dark-headed five-year-old boy whose skin was browned by the sun stood in the next-door neighbor’s driveway and stared – rudely, I thought. I got out and stared back, hands on my hips.

    “Tell him your name,” my parents prompted.

    “My name is Lisa,” I stated imperiously.

    “Lee-fa?” he lisped.

    “No-o,” I retorted, drawing it out so his brain could better take it in, “Lisa.”

    Now he grinned, and knew he had the better of me. “Lee-fa,” he stated, satisfied.

    And thus began the vigorous and immensely enjoyable battle (in which I got repeatedly stomped in basketball and popping and riding wheelies, but held my own in swimming, running, spitting, “Indian” burns, and most everything else) that lasted for the next fifteen years.