My idol, my Dory.

There are a lot of people out there who like to quote Dory, the little blue forgettable fish from Finding Nemo. I love Dory too. She cracks me up. Personally, not a huge fan of Ellen but, as a little blue fish, she rocks! If there is anyone who has not seen or heard about Finding Nemo, I am sorry. It is a great movie, check it out, there is a message there that everyone should appreciate (in fact, there are several, so that really adds to the universal appeal.)

It’s funny to think that my idol is a cartoon character. But, lately circumstances have forced me to look in weird places to keep a positive attitude. And I happened to land upon Dory from Finding Nemo. Dory is this little blue fish with short term memory issues. She can’t remember what she did, said or heard 3 minutes ago, but she has this mantra in her head that keeps her going, “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, just keep swimming.” Sorry if I didn’t get that exactly right, but that is the gist of it anyways. I would also like to take this opportunity to also make a statement that fish do NOT have 3 minute memory. Too many people think fish are stupid, when in fact they are not. I have heard many people make statements like that. “It’s okay to keep fish in a bowl because they would forget they have been swimming in circles” or “that it is easy to overfeed fish because they forget they have already eaten.” Well, it is NOT true. When I open the lid to my little aquarium in the morning, my fishes swim to the corner. If they really have 3 minute memories, they wouldn’t remember that is where I feed them. Fish are pretty smart creatures. I got to be kind of “fishy racism” as the movie progressed. Even so, Dory (not Ellen) will always be my idol because of her optimism.

When things get bad, she reminds herself to just keep swimming. She knows if she just keep swimming, she will be okay. It is only when the swimming stops that the problem begins! How many of us do the same? Probably every single one of us do something like that. “Just keep running!” “Just get through this last lap and then you are done for the day.” If we had a mascot for our house for sports day, it would probably be a yellow Dory (Jupiter). I just looked dory up on the net and found that a dory fish means “gilded one” and is a silvery deep bodied fish with large eyes which lives near the ocean floor. Her mantra inspires all of us to do better and keep trying. Even if we “fall on our butt” (sorry Nur), we can look to Dory for inspiration and start “swimming” (running) again.

But my inspiration and how this relates to athletics in PE lessons in school, comes from the end of the movie. Remember the scene very close to the end where Dory has just found Nemo and for once her memory succeeded and she remembered what she needed to? Dory realized she had Nemo, but Marlin (Nemo’s dad) was swimming off into the ocean in saddness, thinking his son was dead. He was headed towards the “feeling grounds” where surely something awful would happen to him. As Dory and Nemo swim off looking for Marlin, they passed by a large school of really ugly fish, then they find Marlin, the family is reunited (joy, euphoria) and then the really ugly fishes swim back the other direction yelling at everyone to swim and get out of the way. A giant net comes sweeping along grabbing up a bunch of the ugly fishes as well as Dory (Marlin and Nemo are too small to get caught in the net). Nemo knows he has to help his friend. In an earlier scene Nemo learned that a bunch of fish, working together, can pull down a net. Nemo knows he can make his plan work and convinces his overprotective dad that he can do it. Marlin, Nemo and Dory work together to get all the fish swimming together back down towards the bottom of the ocean. Dory chants “keep swimming” while Nemo and Marlin shows the others what to do. The group succeeds and all the fish are saved from the fishermen’s net. There is a moment where they let you think Nemo gets killed when the net falls on top of him, pinning him to the ocean floor, but he fine and everybody lives happily ever after.

So, here at Fairview’s PE lessons, sorry to say it, but we are all the ugly fish and Dory and Nemo and Marlin. In my version, we are all beautiful fish. We are stuck in a net. A net of unhealthy habits, whatever they may be. In that, we differ widely. Some of us are already at a point where we eat right, but things start to change and we need to put a little more effort into ourselves, some of us are working on eating and working out whereas some of us have lived their lives with unhealthy food for years now and are ready for a change. I have never found someone EXACTLY like me. We are all unique in our own ways but we all share the desire to break free of whatever net is holding us down. And for some of us, the battle is life or death or no caps no run or even do or die just like in the movie. The great thing is that we have help. We don’t have to figure out how to break that net all by ourselves. We have Dories (friends and teachers) who, while “battling” alongside of us, are there to cheer us on, give us encouragement and keep us “swimming” (running) in the right direction. We also have Nemo (Mr John) and Marlin (Ms Nurul) in the form of teachers and coaches who have done this, they know what needs to be done and how to do it right. They know that it will work and we will break free if we can all work together and get the job done. Just keep swimming (running) and you will start to feel that net bending and breaking (sore muscles and ligaments ripping apart) and eventually you will find yourself free of that net that was holding you down. Just watch out for other fisherman (pro runners), there are a lot of them out there, but, that is the other great thing. If you happen to get caught in another net, Dory, Marlin and Nemo (friends, mr John and Ms Nurul) will be there waiting to help you again! So, there you have it, my idol is Dory.