Read Pink Boots and a Machete for Free Online

selected from the initial hundreds to go on to compete for the highly coveted pompoms. The audition process was grueling, both physically and emotionally. I gave up several days a week to rehearse and was regularly humiliated by the coach for missing a step or standing slightly out of line. Luckily, I was used to being yelled at. You can’t live with three Cuban moms and not be.
    After hundreds of hours, badly bruised hamstrings, and more high kicks than a 50-year run of the New York City Rockettes, I was deemed flexible and coordinated enough to hold the title of professional cheerleader. One of only 32 spots. Vivian was not so lucky. She was the last to be cut.
    I had reached stardom, I thought, even if I got paid only $25a game. Regardless of the pay, I still smile when I think back to being on the football field in a stadium filled with 70,000 screaming fans and the emotion that would come over me every time I stood listening to the national anthem.
    Though if I’m honest, the height of gratification came the following year when some of the cheerleaders from my high school who had snubbed me from their squad came to audition and got cut. Very like a cheerleader, I realize.
    I continued going to university, slightly more popular now, and was breezing through a double major in English and philosophy. I excelled, in fact, never failing to make the dean’s list. There came a point when I was just a few credits shy of graduating and needed to fulfill one last science requirement. The women’s biology course I wanted to take was full, and all my pleading did not convince the professor to let me in. Even batting my lashes failed to do the trick, a tactic that up to that point had been foolproof.
    I had no choice but to scroll through the list of available courses to find something else, and I settled on an anthropology course that seemed vaguely interesting. More important, it was scheduled at the perfect time—it didn’t interfere with prime poolside hours for tanning. OK, burning.
    The anthropology professor was tough, and I considered dropping the class more than once. But it was during that class that my passion for animals was rekindled. When she began talking about primates, our closest living nonhuman relatives, I was transported to places exotic and faraway. I came to learn of the plight of these animals, so many ofwhich were on the verge of extinction. As I researched my newfound obsession, I saw that there were no photographs, only line drawings, of some of these animals. I started to ask more and more questions in class and discovered that even at a time when we had set foot on the moon, many places here on Earth had yet to be explored.
    After class one day, I nervously approached my professor—who looked me up and down, stopping at what I’m sure she thought was an all-too-revealing top and too-short skirt, along with platform shoes—and began to ask her a question. But before the words came out of my mouth, she said, “I saw you on TV. You’re a cheerleader.” I thought I would die. She’d seen me wearing the little uniform and shaking my pom-poms. All this before handing me back the assignment I’d turned in late as a result of that Monday night game.
    I gathered my courage and said, “Dr. Taylor, I think I would like to become a primatologist. How do I do that?” I immediately realized how silly I must have sounded, but without missing a beat, she replied, “You need to develop a research question, formulate a hypothesis, and apply for a grant. There’s actually a university grant for women in the sciences, and the deadline is in a couple of weeks.” Noticing that she had answered my question without so much as cracking a smile, I felt like a scholar for the first time.
    Dr. Taylor then asked me about my “other” life as a cheerleader, which had obviously intrigued or puzzled her for some time. As it turned out, Doc, as she soon