In honor of the fact that I have my first gym class in four years in about 20 minutes–and, am, incidentally, scared out of my mind because the book mentions calipers, and I have really bad memories of those–I’m starting a thread.
What’s the worst/most embarassing/funniest/cruelest thing that has happened to you in gym class?
I was the geekiest, most-picked-on girl in school.
Eighth grade. I was 14. The day we had to perform a group dance routine in gym class that we had been practicing for a week. I felt like a pig on roller skates as it was.
What could possibly make this worse?
How about the first day of Scarlett’s first-ever menstrual cycle?
(Don’t worry, I noticed it in the morning at home and took care of it. But I sure felt as though everyone knew and was laughing at me. To this day, hearing Dan Fogelberg’s “Longer Than” [the song we chose for our routine] makes me wince at the memory of that nerve-racking day.)
When I was a senior in HS, me and a few friends re-took PE.
We all had fith period free but had a siths period class so we couldn’t leave so we decided playing basketball would be more fun. Plus we could give the freshmen hell.
Anyway in the spring we had a very attractive woman doing her student teaching in our PE class. So I pitching in softball and a blazing line drive comes straight back at me and hits me. Hits me right in the crotch. After planting my face in the ground and nearly passing out everyone gathered around and stood there laughing at me.
Our regular teacher laughed and as the Prom was that night commented ‘There goes your after Prom activity!’ Which got a huge laugh because he was the only person in the school who didn’t know that I did not have a date for the Prom and therefore was not going.
Not my best day in HS.
I had a former Marine Corps Drill Instrutor as a high school gym teacher. He was a nice guy, but really hard on us for the workouts.
Normally when I had my period, I would get an excuse out of gym class, but one day I thought it would be a good idea to try and talk to the teacher and explain why I didn’t feel like taking class. He told me that women in the Marine Corps can handle it and so can I.
During the work out, we were doing bicycles (lying on our backs and peddling up in the air) The room was quiet at the time and without my control, I let out a very loud vart (vaginal fart).
The entire room, boys and girls, looked right at me. I was quickly excused from class. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.
12th grade, elective gym. I had it first period (nothing like a good game of basketball to get the blood pumping first thing in the a.m. Grab a shower, shave, and I was ready to greet the day), at the same time as a number of freshman, who were taught by another instructor.
The locker room had a door that opened into a courtyard (imagine a U shaped space with classrooms on either wing of the U and the door located at the bottom). One spring morning several friends and I deposited a frosh, clad only in a towel, into the courtyard. As you can expect, all eyes in the class rooms immediately turned to the “Let me go, damn it! Put me down!” We retreated in the door and held it closed while the poor guy pounded away trying to get in. He was none the worse for wear, and even got several dates from several girls who had seen him standing in a wet towel, trying to get back into the building.
I have lousy hand-eye coordination to begin with, and this was compounded by the fact that I was in middle school and very shy. We had this evil gym teacher named Mrs. Woods and we were in the middle of our tennis unit. About a week into the unit, she called me up in front of the class with everyone watching and instructed me to hit the ball she was going to throw. I got into position, swung and of course missed.
She then turned to the class and announced, “And that, class, is how NOT to hit a ball.”
plnnr, how was that embarassing to you?
Gym class in high school was hell for me. Not because I was out of shape. Not because I was bad at anything. Just because the crappy scheduling. All four years I got stuck in classes that had the dumbest activities.
Other classes played kickball, floor hockey, baseball, basketball, golf. Even got to go into town several times to go bowling. Not me. I got stiffed every single time.
Lame-ass aerobics. Square dancing. Running on a damned track.
The square dancing was the worste, though. I somehow managed to get paired with this huge (huge) annoying, blathering, dimwitted, waste of skin girl who was a grade or two ahead of me (at this point I think she had been held back at least three times as it was) and was pretty much one of the least friendly and obnoxious people I’ve ever had the displeaseure of having met.
Nightmares, I tell ya.
I’m back (gym didn’t seem horrible).
The worst thing that ever happened to me was in elementary school. We had to play dodgeball. Now, I might not’ve been the most coordinated or the fastest or the strongest kid in the world, but I have incredible reaction time when playing sports, and can get out of the way but-good. It (and floor hockey, though I didn’t figure that out until later) was the only thing I didn’t totally suck at. I couldn’t throw, but I could scoot and bend out of the way.
It didn’t take long for the rest of the class–who was used to me totally sucking–to figure this out. Naturally, they came up with a new strategy: whip as many balls at Angel as they can at one time. As close to the beginning of the game as possible. Aiming at my chest and head.
One or two balls, I can dodge. Four kickballs being thrown at me at top speed–no way.
So I’d get hammered with, like, two kickballs, and those SOBs hurt. This happened every time we played–as soon as I got out where I could be hit, it happened. After a particularly nasty one hit me in the side of the head, I told the teacher. Who immediately told me it was strategy, and that I should suck it up.
So, it continued. Eventually, they started throwing them at me when I was already out of the game and standing on the side or the edges. The teacher still didn’t do anything.
…that’s just the physically worst. The worst overall were the calipers and the weigh-ins, but I don’t really want to talk about that here.
I can’t think of any specific incidents, it was more like ten years of low-grade misery (broken by the occasional cross-country run, the one and only athletic event I was average, rather than totally pathetic, at).
I still don’t understand how people can play sports for fun. Ugh.
Where to begin?
Sellers Middle School (Garland, TX) is the sole source of all of my school horror stories, and all three years I took gym there are where more than half of those originated.
Sample pack:
I was in the 6th grade. At Sellers, Gym as Gym, and not segregated according to grade, so we had 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in there with us. Israel Guzman wasn’t your normal 8th grader. Israel was old enough to be in the 10th grade, which easily made him the tallest, toughest “kid” in middle school and he surrounded himself with sycophants of the lowest order. Israel would sit next to the restroom in the changing area with his underwear pulled low enough to expose his 'pubes and taunt all who passed in need of a pee–“Hey, man, don’t’cha wish you had some of THEESE?” Whilst his crew giggled.
His crew was the worst of the lot. One of them, whose name I can’t recall, would come up to you and say “you’ve got something on your neck, let me look.” A naive 6th grader, I, lifted my neck only to get a karate chop on the future site of my Adam’s Apple thus rendering me actually unable to breathe for several scary moments.
Same child-psychopath would constantly taunt my friend “Peter” as “Hey, Petermydick!” Wot a riot.
The gym teacher? Coach Montgomery was a useless lout, and a dumbass, and was eventually fired–after I finally left for H.S.
Another friend of mine was even geekier than I (at that time; he would eventually tone it down whilst I remained geeky) was called by the psycho children (and encouraged by the coach) “Birdman” because of the way he ran sprints in Gym. Consolation: I now have a Geology PhD and my friend now has a Biology PhD and they’re probably in jail.
Plus, I got to witness my first-ever arrest when Israel and one of his little buddies were cuffed and hauled off. That remains one of my fondest Middle School gym memories EVER.
Ah… good times.
I should further note that, thanks to Sellers MS gym class, I stayed in HS band for four years simply because I never wanted to take “gym” again… And now I’m a half-assed trombone player; thanks Sellers!
AAGH!! Gym class! NO!!! Oh, the horror… Someone mentioned the President’s Physical Fitness Tests in another, similar thread, and ever since that memory was resurrected for me I can’t get it out of my head! I was such a goody-two-shoes in school, but gym class was the one class I skipped every chance I got. I’d stay there long enough for my attendence to be noted and sneak out ASAP.
I have too many gym class nightmares to bear thinking about, but the President’s Physical Fitness Test was one of the worst. Is there any point, other than humiliation, to making a fat, out-of-shape kid like I was run a mile? I can’t think of one.
When I was in grade school, three friends and I were basically shunned by the rest of the class. Nobody would talk to us or work on projects with us. In gym class, during the course of the year we went from “always picked last” to “not picked at all.” The team captains would pick everybody else and then walk off to start playing. Usually we’d just split ourselves up among the two teams, but sometimes I’d just sit on the sidelines and wait for P.E. class to be over so I could go back into the classroom and be ignored some more.
{{ shiver }} gym class …
I also have no specific stories to relate, just years of low-grade misery, like Fretful.
Somehow I ended up not hating sports, just gym class. I think part of the curriculum should be ‘Don’t Let Gym Class Put you Off Sports.’
And including Sex Ed was also a bad idea. Sex and gym teachers should never, ever be thought of at the same time. They hated it, we hated it, what was the point?
I heard the boy’s gym teacher taught them that the uterus is just like the Starship Enterprise.
Gym class, ugh, the horrid memories. Seventh grade was the worst. I was among the lowest social class in school so I was already picked on a lot. I was a classic geek. I had virtually no athletic prowess. In seventh grade the instructor had us play touch football for the first few weeks. He just assumed that we all knew how to play and he didn’t take the time to help those of us who didn’t. Having had no interest whatsoever in football, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, so all I ended up doing was running around the field totally clueless and oblivious to the others who also knew I was completely useless to their team. I was always dead last when it came to being picked for the teams. Often times I wasn’t even picked, but assigned by default to the team that didn’t have the same number of players just to even things out.
I hated Fridays in gym class because that was our day to run the mile. Before I was even halfway through it I was already desperately gasping for air and so devoid of strength by then that I was reduced to walking the remainder of the run, and I always finished last, giving the other, more physically fit students an opportunity to mock me for my limited endurance.
I also got “pantsed” one time in front of several girls, as the school-issued gym shorts were big and baggy and easy to pull down.
We played other sports, too, such as soccer, basketball and baseball, and while I wasn’t much better at these, at least I knew how to play them. We also did weights and other miscellaneous activities. My one shining moment was when it was found that I could bench press more than a lot of the other kids (I have a stocky build).
If I had to do it all over again and could opt out of one class, P.E. definitely would have been my first choice for this.
Maximum warp, Mr. Sulu!
More stories than I care to relate. Had one gym teacher who was a former Marine and enjoyed telling us about his service in Vietnam. More than once, I have wondered what would be done, today, about a guy who told a bunch of children about “blowing dinks’ heads off” and little children with grenades and such. The guy was a friggin’ maniac.
Had another coach who was, flatly, a sadistic bastard. He routinely encouraged the kids to beat the crap out of each other, or humiliate each other. In the rest of the school, we were expected to behave. In his gym class? Open season. He had a wonderful time doing it, too. Nothing like lying on the ground bleeding while a grownup stands over you laughing to make a mark on a fellow…
Co-ed swim class in high school. You couldn’t bring your own suit. We had to use the ones provided by the school that were color-coded by size. I squeezed myself into red like all my friends, resulting in major cleavage. At least neither of the girls ever popped out, though. That, and having to sit on the bench during my period (I didn’t use tampons at the time). We couldn’t just sit up in the bleachers or go to the library - we had to put on the suits anyway and sit on the bench.
The guys’ suits were not color-coded. But they had to deal with shrinkage factor.
Ah, P.E. I hate you forever.
My worst day was actually pretty hilarious, even at the time, but only because I am good at laughing at myself. I was a H.S. sophomore at the time, and one of two girls in the class (I started out as the only one, but another joined mid-semester). The teacher was the football coach, so most non-rainy days, we were out playing flag football, which was a blast-- my favorite rule: completed pass to a girl = automatic first down. I was always picked first. Woo hoo!
But then, spring rolled around, as it always does, and Coach decided it was time to try softball. Oh. My. God. I absolutely SUCKED at it. When I was in outfield (never played a base), I’d lose the ball against the sky and miss the catch. When I was at bat, I’d strike out in three swings. Never fouled or anything.
Coach decided one day that everyone would stay at bat until they made a hit. Ha ha! Guess who was at bat for 40 minutes out of a 50 minute period? You got it. Finally got a line drive and that was that. It was hell. People were picking flowers in the outfield. Boys. Picking flowers. Out of boredom.
Ugh. That’s rough, porcupine- The idea of using a suit someone else has been in gives me shivers.
I hated gym. I remember a friend of mine and I were in one class, and given the choice of either volley ball or dogeball, opted for the latter. (Incidentally, am I the only one who completely identifies with the theme song to “Daria”?) Of course, dogeball with several testosterone laden guys simultaneously pelting one another and lowering the collective IQ score of the room wasn’t any better. Logically, the gym teacher blames the two of us (seemingly, the only sane ones), for not participating and set us off to volleyball.
Ah, but gym teachers…gym teachers are sadistic. I remember we had to play blind-folded soccer once in middle school. One blind-folded person kicked and the other partner would guide the blind one. Who the hell comes out with this? Must they punish us for their low salaries? Ai…