Origins
Do read Mike B’s article.
In a kindergarten classroom in the mid-1960s, a kid named Mikey steered clear of the boys stacking large toy blocks on top of one another and knocking them down again–so obnoxious—and instead went and sat at the table of girls making beads out of salt dough and stringing them together on a thread. These girls were not averse to tasting the salt dough and smacking their lips in disgust. The teacher had wisely settled on salt dough because she knew it wouldn’t poison the students should they eat it. At least the girls were smart and funny and didn’t continually knock each other to the floor.
Mikey preferred these sober, artsy activities–making necklaces of salt dough beads, pressing hand prints into soft clay disks, tracing the profiles of silhouetted heads projected via lamp light onto sheets of construction paper–over the rough-and-tumble of block stacking, fat-ball tossing, and floor hockey, because–well, he just did. Thus developed the central themes of his boyhood–hates sports; likes art and language; hangs out with the girls.
Throughout grade school, gym class gave him a terrible knot in his stomach and he longed to be elsewhere, a disposition cemented into place by an incident during a game of “battle ball,” in which boys stood at opposite walls and hurled large pneumatic balls at each other for God knows what reason, and a ball smacked him square in the face and knocked his glasses off his head.
I always longed to be elsewhere during gym class too. A long walk through fields for preference.
Gym class was the worst. I can’t run, I can’t jump, I can’t throw, and I can’t hit. But I’m tall, so everyone thought I should be good at volleyball. Only thing is, I can’t serve and I can’t return a serve. When I could, I sneaked to a corner and read a book during gym. Since none of the kids wanted me on their team, they didn’t usually tell on me.
Yeah, I hated it too. The only gym class I ever enjoyed was tennis. I skipped the rest of it, and failed gym for years as a result. Playing games with the potential for broken bones and cackling bullies never appealed to me. I almost didn’t graduate HS because of that. I’m with Ophelia, give me a nature trail, or a good book, or both.
Thanks ophelia!
High school PE was the best… I got wonderful naps on the bleachers (I would often stay up until the wee hours of the morning reading and was constantly sleep deprived).
If for no other reason, go over there and read the comment Arty has posted. His usual well-said self.
I too plead guilty to being the weedy, unathletic, bespectacled kid in my PE class. I do however acknowledge that my suffering was probably matched by that of the PE staff in valiantly coming up with eight distinct variations on a theme to succeed the C – tries hard that formed my first secondary school PE report. The one exception, when a seasonal flu outbreak so depleted the field of competition for a cross country run that I came in joint first, drew such an accodade attached to my solaritary B grade, that I would still hesitate to disilluion its author by revealing that the class’s one unafflicted athlete very sportingly agreed to share the honours with me when he was on the point of passing me as I vomitted into the hedge 200 metres short of the finish line.
Great comment by Arty indeed.
God, Mike.
I’m so moved by your article, and I’m so happy that it exists. I don’t know how to express how grateful I am that you wrote it. And I’m impressed that 3 Quarks Daily had the guts to publish it. It’s a beautiful thing to read, and I suspect it’s having a quiet but enomous impact on a lot of people. It’s strange, how difficult this topic can be, how hard it is to get people to open their hearts and minds to it. It’s like taming a wild horse: you have to sneak up on it with surgical precision and timing, and then you have to ride the inevitable bucks and violent convulsions until it calms. It’s a very difficult thing to accomplish. But you’ve threaded the needle. I sense that you’ve tamed a lot of wild horses with your skillful prose. Three cheers for you!
Arty, I’m moved and flattered! It was partially thru reading you and others that I’ve gained a clearer picture of this complicated cultural phenomenon. Thank you.
I love it that you can thread a needle while riding a bucking violently convulsing wild horse! Best metaphor mashup of all time.
I relish my mixed metaphors. I mustard them, too.
It’s what genius does!
One one hand, we have worries about the unfitness and obesity that prevail among American kids. With nostalgic mentions of the good old days when P.E. was still part of school. But real life P.E. wasn’t about actual education. It was an opportunity to reinforce toxic social standards, select the elite boys for Big School Sports, and ritually trample the ‘outsiders.’
That was me too. In flag football, I played a position called ‘traction,’ under the feet of bigger boys. My sight wasn’t good enough for any sport involving throwing or catching, actual fitness or physical development was NEVER part of the equation.
An ironic afternote or two: after turning 30, I gained interest and ownership of my own body. At 69 I run twice a week, engage in various strength activities etc. While the ‘stars’ of high school are dropping dead from heart failure and diabetes.
And, as usual, I’d like to put in a word for us gender non-forming heterosexuals. Butch straight women and femme straight men.
non-conforming? Or was non-forming what you meant?
Also, same – I hated sports and thus was never good at any of them (except archery) but I walk miles every day, because I like to.
Also for those of us who were neither butch nor feminine. We just sort of ‘were’. Bookish, nerdy, with glasses, but not butch.
Thanks to Mike for his article, Arty for his comment there, and OB for sharing it here.