Warm Georgia sun shone on me uninhibited as I lay uncomfortably across a broken wooden pallet. Closing my eyes to its light, I listened as all of my teammates received their own pretend “disabilities”–broken legs, broken arms, blindness & deafness. Each of us was assigned a physical challenge. We were pretend survivors of a small plane crash, and I was the “unconscious” one among the team scattered around a small red-clay field.
Secretly I was relieved to be the unconscious one. It meant I wouldn’t have to expend any energy on a day when I had none. Whether it was the heat, intensity of training camp or some little stomach bug, sickness had robbed me of my breakfast and lunch. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to give my all to help my team out during our challenges, I lay there frustrated by my physical weakness but glad for the small break. Sighing, I tried to relax and tune in to my teammates’ communication around me. Time was ticking away, and if we didn’t get the entire team all the way up the hill in just a few short minutes, we were all dead. Worse, that meant we failed to rise to the challenge.
Unconscious members of teams cannot contribute their own ideas. Nor can they physically help themselves in any way. I quickly became the primary challenge to reaching safety at the top of the hill as my teammates tried desperately to heave my floppy body onto the back of one girl. I am a task-oriented person, and I love contributing my ideas (when I think they’re good ones, anyways). Silence quickly became my internal frustration, and in my heart I felt as heavy as my body felt to the girl who literally couldn’t physically stand up with me on her back.
Apparently, though, unconscious people can giggle. (It does help to relieve tension, especially when your limbs and head are flopping around like a rag doll and you wonder what you look like to the observers watching the team.) The observers, noticing our struggle, had mercy on us, “woke” me up and restored the use of my arms. Whew! Now I could at least contribute to the teamwork and do what I could with my little bit of strength.
We were running out of time. In the midst of two one-legged girls, one no-armed girl, one blind-deaf girl and one broken wooden pallet with a nail sticking out at the most unfortunate place, my team managed to get me onto one girl’s back with just a few more minutes in the challenge. Voicing directions to my blind-deaf carrier while the other teammates bonded together as a three-person, four-legged hopping creature, we began hobbling up the hill as quickly as we could, panting and sweating.
“Thirty seconds!” Suddenly it was URGENT. We were still about 100 yards from our goal. We knew we couldn’t make it…but there wasn’t any other way. …”BLAST!!!” the voice yelled from behind. And like that, we were all “dead.” Our team had failed the challenge.
—a glimpse…
Failure was frustrating. We were chastised. Weak leadership. Few ideas actually tried. Ideas that would have worked were thrown out without being tried. The worst part was, we knew we could have done better. We just hadn’t come together as a team…something was missing. The defeat weakened me even more, and I was beat. Exhausted and sick, I trudged with my team on to the next challenge.
Story continues in Tossing Things Aside…
