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| Suffering through Gym Class |
Introductory
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Thesis |
In high school my Tuesday mornings were awful. Even before the school's front door had slammed behind me, I could sense a nauseating dampness rising up from the locker room, a mist of stale sweat. Tuesday for me was physical education day. And because I was no athlete, each of my 8:00 a.m. trips downstairs to the gym seemed like a clammy and quivering walk to the guillotine, my heartbeat like a drumbeat, my ego about to suffer its ritual of public execution. For three long years, gym class was my weekly exercise in failure. |
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First Body
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Although I respected my gym teacher's commitment to excellence, the standards in this class simply were impossible for me to reach. Everybody was expected to be an athlete - and nothing less would do. Effort was ignored in favor of performance. Winning became all-important, and losing teams were punished with extra laps. The fun in any game quickly disappeared. To make matters worse, some gung-ho classmates seemed to mirror our teacher's attitude; in a few short weeks, a kind of caste system had developed, jocks on top, the marginally acceptable in the middle, and klutzes like me--the untouchables--at the very bottom. |
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Whatever sport we played, I could count on being the loser, even when my team won. In baseball, I was the sure strikeout, the right fielder whose glove had a hole in it. In basketball, I had a hard time hitting the backboard, much less scoring a basket. In soccer, I tripped over my own feet. No less disastrous than team sports were those emphasizing individual performance. Parallel bars, hurdles, broad jumps, or high jumps-all were occasions for my world-class embarrassment. The more pathetic attempts I made, the more I came to feel incompetent and inferior. |
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Third Body
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I was continually reminded of my failures. Whenever players were picked for teams, I was sure to be last-huddled among the few remaining rejects trying to look nonchalant. Bracing myself at home plate for the inevitable swing-and-miss, I could count on hearing a few hisses and groans from teammates, and at least one reassuring "easy out!" from opponents. Even my friends affectionately nicknamed me "the athlete." More charitable than my peers, our teacher simply ignored, for the most part, those of us who qualified as wimps. And, as if to certify my incompetence, my C-minus grade (a gift, I guess, for passing "showers") would destroy an otherwise impressive grade average. At all these indignities I laughed on the outside, but not on the inside. |
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The whole experience left me feeling defeated. Instead of having fun and gaining self-confidence, I felt blacklisted. Intimidated by a standard of performance impossible for me to achieve, I never gave myself the chance to discover my personal best. Taking fewer and fewer risks, I grew to accept the certainty of failure in sports. Those painful years are now behind me, but I still have trouble playing even a sport as casual as volleyball without a good deal of anxiety. Looking back, I can appreciate the value of challenge in any class, but I can't help resenting a system that so relentlessly forces personal shortcomings into public display. |
From John M. Lannon, The Writing Process: A Concise Rhetoric (Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1989) 63-65.
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