Off Balance: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

school, leaving me even more self-conscious and insecure about who I was. Who was I, after all? I didn’t even really know back then. I struggled daily to fit in. I remember one day in third-grade gym class when the instructor selected two students as team captains to pick squads for kickball. I wasn’t close with anyone in my class, but I truly felt like an outcast that afternoon when everyone else’sname in the class was called one by one and I was left standing all by myself looking from side to side uncomfortably and somewhat mortified. It was clear that neither wanted me and they simply refused to choose me. The PE teacher finally came to my rescue and named me to a team to break the awkward silence. It felt like an eternity as I walked in shame to stand in line with my team. I felt so unwanted. I didn’t belong anywhere.
    In retrospect, incidents like that just added fuel to my isolation and made me feel out of place in a time when I was trying so hard to find myself. All I really knew was that I had a strange last name and parents who were from a country that no kids, and few adults, could find on the map. My parents had heavy accents when they spoke English, and nobody could ever pronounce our last name correctly. I avoided saying my last name as much as possible when I was younger because I was embarrassed when people would ask me to repeat it over and over and still weren’t able to pronounce it correctly. It only reminded me of how awkward and weird I was among my peers.
    Believe it or not, I still had anxiety about saying my last name in public as teenager after I had already become an internationally known gymnast. I remember panicking when I was thirteen years old at a USA–Belarus–China gymnastics competition called the Visa Challenge in 1995. In a televised interview, the reporter asked each member of Team USA to introduce herself by saying her first and last name into the cameras for the viewers at home. As she went down the row of my teammates standing in a line beside the balance beam, I quickly tried to rehearse how I should pronounce “Moceanu.” I must’ve said it five different ways, trying to figure out which pronunciation would be easiest to understand. I could hear Tata’s voice rattling in my head, as he would say our family name proudly—our name is “M-oh-chee-ah-noo!” He said it with such certainty and such finality, but I still thought it sounded funny when I said it out loud.I wasn’t comfortable for some reason.
    I wasn’t nearly as nervous to compete in the meet as I was during these introductions. As the cameraman went down the line, one by one my teammates said their names with confidence: “Dominique Dawes,” “Katie Teft,” “Kellee Davis.” When he got to me in the middle of the group, my mind jumped and I intentionally mispronounced my name “Dominique M-oh- sey -noo.” I couldn’t believe I had just changed my name on national TV to make it easier for people to say. It sounded so silly once it came out of my mouth, and immediately I realized I had made a mistake and probably greatly disappointed my family, too. I felt awful.
    I guess I was still haunted by my earlier years when I was ashamed of my name during roll call at school. I’d be so nervous as I squirmed at my desk waiting for the teacher to scroll down the alphabet and finally get to my name. There was always a pause after my first name, the teacher unsure how to pronounce my name. They’d give their best crack at it, but it would always end up butchered.
    I rarely went on playdates or invited anyone home to play in those early elementary years, which didn’t help in the friend department. I was nervous that Tata would say or do something to scare them off for good. Tata could be charming and friendly, but he could also be aloof and act suspicious of “outsiders.” Romanian was all I spoke at home. Mama and Tata were multilingual, speaking Greek, Romanian, and English fairly fluently. English