The Battle of The Monkey Bars

The coursework was stressing me out, the impending shadow of my first TEWT was coming up fast and the looming threat of going on offensive operations (offops) was going to have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. My main stress however during the first few weeks back at the college during II class was my fitness. More specifically, my complete and utter inability to do monkey bars.

You know how when you’re a kid and you’re freakishly, disproportionately strong and flexible, and there’s practically nothing in the realm of athletics and gymnastics that you can’t do? Even then, I’d never been able to do monkey bars…. And this had never disappointed me. I’d never felt the desire to even try. They hurt my hands and got me nowhere fast. Why bother even trying? Never in my life did I ever suspect that my career might be impeded by my utter inability to do monkey bars.

At RMC the monkey bars were my own personal demon. A source of hindrance, tears and frustration. They were part of a test every single cadet has to complete in order to prove that they are fit and mobile enough in order to play sport.

No monkey bars, no sport.

I remember the first time I heard this I just stared and blinked at the PTI. Stared, blinked heavily and breathed deeply, like some dumb cow in a field. The logic didn’t, still doesn’t compute. I remember thinking, Sooo….You’re telling me that because I’ve never been able to do monkey bars my entire life, my parents should never have let me take to a netball court? Because…not being able to do monkey bars meant I was obviously so unfit that I was a danger to myself and those around me? IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE TELLING ME??

These weren’t even regular monkey bars either! Positioned halfway through an exhausting obstacle course, these monkey bars were made of steel, notoriously slippery, and they inclined up.

I strategically dragged out my duties as Orderly Officer the day that my whole class had to attempt the test. This way I knew I wouldn’t have to suffer the humiliation of watching each and every one of them swing past me triumphantly.

I couldn’t escape them forever though. My time to attempt them came the following Tuesday and the inevitable happened. I grasped the bar, leaned out as far as my ridiculously long body allowed me, reached out as far out, to as many rungs as I could possibly reach whilst still having my feet firmly planted 

It always ended the same way. I lifted my feet, dangled for a mortifying, pathetic second, and then dropped onto the pebbles (what sort of sick person put a pebble bed underneath monkey bars anyway?) 

I had failed, and thus began my long stint in ‘Remedial PT’.

Remedial PT is a funny thing. Every Tuesday and Thursday the entire college lines up into their chosen sports to hear any messages for the afternoon before proceeding to go play those sports until dinner. If you’re on remedial PT you stand in front of everyone else, like, they literally stand in a horse shoe on either side of you, staring at you, while you’re dressed in the ugly brown T-shirt and baggy navy shorts that you lived in whilst on boot camp in III Class.

 You stand there, silently, on show for everyone to judge. And they are judging you, because if you don’t have a visible injury, you don’t have a valid excuse for being on remedial. You’re automatically regarded as obviously either not fit enough, too fat or you’re a (dare I say it?)…a linger. A malingerer, the absolute worst thing you can be at the College, other than being ‘Jack’. 

Being on remedial PT for the first few weeks after Christmas break was always alright, because there were always quite a few people who had let themselves go a little and hadn’t passed either this physical test or that, so you were never alone in your shame. However, after the weeks passed, the remedial PT numbers dwindled, and soon there were only about three of us left. Standing in the middle of the square, twice a week, every week, being judged, all because I couldn’t do the stupid monkey bars.

Battleblocks came and went, our first ever TEWT experience traumatised me, and then passed. Still the monkey bars defeated me, week after week. I ripped the skin off my palms on those monkey bars. Fell flat on my face in the pebbles whilst attempting those monkey bars. Months, literally months had passed and I still couldn’t get more than half way. 

People were offering all sorts of suggestions. 

“Spin your legs like a bicycle”

“Try swinging from one bar to the next one like an orangutan”

“Here…watch me!”

The amount of people I had to watch successfully and effortlessly navigate the monkey bars was...more than merely painful, it was a tiny bit soul crushing. I was beginning to think I had something fundamentally physiologically wrong with me.

TEWT season came by AGAIN, and this time there were two assessed TEWTS. It was not a good week. I was still feeling the pressure of my ‘improve, improve, improve’ diagnosis from my previous battleblock and I stressed out again to an inappropriate level over this latest TEWT. I distinctly remember feel physically ill when presenting, and trembling as I wrote from the sheer adrenaline. 

I passed, but I couldn't allow myself much time to enjoy the victory. Coming up was my regular weekly torture session with the monkey bars and I was beginning to feel the regular feeling of dread settling into the pit of my stomach. Something akin to feeling constipated. 

This time however, something had changed. One of the PTIs, a young corporal, had taken some serious time to sit down with me and talk me through exactly how to do these goddamn things. He helped me pin point some exact failing points in my technique.

Point number one: Try, for the love of god just try to attempt any form of passable technique. Don’t just hang there and flop your body around helplessly like a hippopotamus sized, bat.

I ran through all the tips for success over and over in my head for weeks. Use the momentum of your body, don’t stop moving your hands, if you don’t have the strength to hold up your swinging giant monolith of a body, try to hold it as still as possible and just go. Don't be a hippo bat. Go. Go. Go. 

I practised on normal, wooden, flat monkey bars twice a week, every week…and finally, one day, I made it. My hands were buuuurning and half the skin peeled off again, but I’d done it. Now I just had to do it again, on the incline one, fast enough to beat the stopwatch (I don’t think I mentioned before that the bloody test was TIMED).

So that following Tuesday, I stood in front of the entire College in my remedial PT uniform whilst messages were being read out, and then when we were dismissed I headed up to the monkey bars with a Sergeant who looked at me, utterly exasperated and said, “Well? You gonna actually do it today?”
“Yep” I said.
“Like… actually? Should I even bother timing?” He wasn’t a mean guy, but he was trying not to roll his eyes, I could tell.  I don’t even begrudge him for it. He’d been the one who’d been present during my initial test. He knew just how atrocious I was at these.
“No” I told him firmly. “I want you to time me”.

I felt like a woman possessed. I went to the starting line and waited.
“Ready, set…GO!”
I ran up to the wall, highhips,bootstoglutes,twofootlanding

Bam
Ran to the fences, ducked and weaved between them like a mad thing,
Bam
Ran to the sand pit, watched the required distance line sail away behind me. Landed.
Bam
Ran to the big metal logs, awkwardly waddled through them
Bam
Ran to the monkey bars, grabbed them, kept my upper body taunt, began shuffling my hands one rung after the other.
GOGOGOGO
I was half way. My hands were burning
GOGOGOGO

I was four rungs from the end. Four.
And I stopped.
I just couldn’t keep going, didn’t have the strength to reach up and out four more times. I was at my stupid, fucking limit. I dangled there, momentum gone, beyond frustrated, waiting for my grip strength to give out on me when the Sergeant yelled out
“Swing your legs!”
In sheer desperation I swung my legs. They are long enough that they reached the platform of the other side.
They reached the goddamn platform. 

With my precariously perched heels taking a tiny bit of my body weight, filled with the adrenaline mothers sometimes have to lift cars off their babies, I managed to awkwardly waddle (with my hands) the rest of my body in to the ledge...and in to victory.

BAM

I jumped down from the bars, elated, but I wasn’t done yet.
I ran to the balance beam, had never had an issue with it but today, nearly fell off because of the adrenaline, the utter jubilation. I got to the end, lowered my body and performed the correct safety jump at the end onto the pebbles.

 
BAM. 

Done. 

I’d done it.

I turned around and looked at the sergeant. My stomach clenched….ready to be cut down.

“You did it!!” he yelled

“I…I did it!?”

“You did it!”

“What was my time?”

He paused for a second, looked at his watch, grinned and just said… “Never mind! You did it!”

I laughed REALLY UNCOMFORTABLY LOUDLY and then I turned really purple in the face and kind of awkwardly started crying a little bit. 

What had begun as this great celebration turned into this really awkward moment of him looking away and me trying to pretend I just had this really rare sinus disease that flared up suddenly and made me sniff a lot, inappropriately.

Anyway. 

So that's the story of the Battle of the Monkey Bars

Lest we forget.