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...
I may be a lardass, but I want credit for giving PE a chance. From the age of three I was playing every sport in season at the local park, and from the age of five I was trying to bust my prepubescent buns in PE at school. Trying being the operative word here. While most people grew more skilled in sports with age, I seemed to grow even more spastic and slow, to the point where even my grandma seemed to be able to kick a soccer ball with more accuracy than I could. I distinctly remember running the 50-yard dash in 6th grade PE and the harder I tried the slower my times would be. Now that I've matured and watched more sci-fi films/shows I know that I was running so fast that time itself sped up, which meant my time appeared to be slower, but try telling that to an 11 year old.
Obviously I was upset because it's humiliating to be one of the slowest of the 30 girls in your grade, pathetically running like an enthusiastic turtle after a cheetah in front of everybody. Later I'd grow to embrace humiliation--seven years later I would fall down a flight of stairs in front of my entire university department, and I would pick myself up, pump my fists victoriously in the air and shout for all to hear, "Thank you, Collegetown! I'll be here all week!" But at 11 I wasn't there yet. The coach tried to give me a reassuring pat on the shoulder, but I tried to blink back frustrated tears and barked at him to back off. And, very calm, he gave me the one piece of advice he ever gave to anyone: "Walk it off."
This guy was a weirdo. I think you have to be particularly bizarre to want to be a PE teacher. No one ever likes you, except on the rare occasions it rains and you get to host games for the kids. Otherwise, day after day, your mission is to get the kids to run around the track, because for some reason the track needs people to run around it. So yeah, it goes without saying that PE coaches are weird, but this guy merits some emphasis. He was so weird. To start, he had a square head. I can't really do it justice, so I'll just have to settle for telling you that it looked like a cardboard box that someone drew facial features on in Sharpie. And always attached to one panel of this cardboard box was a pair of sunglasses. I swear, this guy wore sunglasses everywhere, indoors and outdoors, rain or shine, to the point where I'm not entirely convinced that he had eyeballs. And, as I mentioned, his advice for all pain, whether physical or emotional, was a steady shout of, "Walk it off!"
You'll think I'm exaggerating. But no. I'm not. Fall and scrape your knee? "Walk it off!" Broken arm? "Walk it off!" Concussion? "Walk it off!" On one occasion in about 3rd grade a girl broke her nose thanks to a smack from a stray soccer ball and bled so profusely from it that blood had drenched the entire front part of her uniform. She staggered around the PE field like some kind of casualty of war while all of us, her dear classmates, ran around screaming that Chrissy was dying and that she had to go to the hospital and that we didn't want to play soccer anymore and that Chrissy's mom is gonna be so upset that her uniform got blood all over it.
I can't remember now whether he got up from a lawn chair on the sidelines or whether he reappeared from out of the bushes on the mountain lion-infested hills surrounding our school, both images seem to make sense to me, but I remember just how calm and majestic he seemed. I guess that's what happens when you're not human but actually an enchanted pile of children's building blocks. But he stepped out into the middle of us shrieking children, who were avoiding Chrissy like the plague because she was now hunched over using her PE shorts to try to contain the flow of blood--and, of course, also shrieking. Except she was bleeding so much that it sort of came out as a gargle. Our coach stepped out into the middle of it, raised his hands into the air like some kind of deity and gave all of us, including Chrissy, his orders: "Walk it off!"
In terms of her nose, the story has a happy ending. She ended up with a nose cast for a while, I don't remember how long, but with no permanent physical damage. I hear she developed a drug problem not long after starting high school and fell in with a bad crowd. Frankly, I don't blame her. If there's anything elementary school PE taught us it's that the world makes no sense and adults are fucking retarded. I'm bleeding my entire blood supply out my nose, I'm scaring the shit out of all of my classmates, and I'm in excruciating pain...and the response of the "responsible adult" is "Walk it off"? It certainly doesn't give you much hope for your future, like there is no sanity in the world.
Luckily my "Walk it off" incident in which the coach suggested that I could just walk off humiliation didn't make me develop a drug problem. But it did make me develop a PE problem.
To be continued. If I feel like it.
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