This is why I'm fat, PART 2: Middle School Soccer

By the time I graduated to middle school my confidence in the usefulness of PE and its coaches had all but disappeared, but for some reason I still gave team sports a chance. Maybe I thought that at a different school the coaches would be different, but unfortunately PE coaches worldwide have to pass a standardized insanity test, and those who are sane enough to be capable of putting together a complete sentence are disqualified from the job.

Oh well. In any case, my first year at my new school I made the soccer team. I say "made" as if there were tryouts and the possibility of getting cut from the team, which is what I'd like to think. This was a decade ago though, so I no longer remember--but I have a hard time believing there could have possibly been cuts, because the girl who totally freaked out that one time a gnat flew into her eye managed to make the team. ...

This is why I'm fat, PART 1: Elementary School PE

The best part about middle school was the fact that the seniors had to park their cars on the football field because of the construction. I wish I could negate that statement with something about how the best part was how accomplished I felt being in the middle school play (I actually felt deeply, deeply embarrassed over how stupid it was; I played the role of someone's conscience) or how the best part was Science Fair (The teacher actually told me he was "embarrassed" over how idiotic my experiment was), but in reality the aspect of middle school that at the end of the day made me feel the warmest and fuzziest inside was the fact that I was able to hide from the PE coaches while running laps.

I look back now and wonder how my life would be different if I had just given in to the barely intelligible demands that I run faster and longer which were delivered through a bullhorn held by a woman who looked like a Brazilian Arnold Schwarzenegger driving a golf cart. I would be much less of a lardass, that's for sure. Or maybe I wouldn't. When I think of all the diving behind Volvos, ducking underneath Jeeps and William Shatner shoulder rolling to the other side of BMWs that my friends and I did, we worked up quite a sweat. And I'm not entirely sure that it was less work than just doing the laps in the first place.

But before I go any further about how I ended up sucking at PE in middle and upper school, let's take a trip back to elementary school...