I actually kind of like gym in grade school… at first.
I was usually the biggest girl in my class and sort of clunky but enthusiastic about volleyball, dodgeball and so on. I didn’t care much for running though, no endurance. But when the P.E. teacher decided all the girls should do gymnastics I was not so keen as I’m hopelessly uncoordinated. I could barely do a somersault. I had to fake a twisted ankle to get out of being embarassed in front of the whole class.
Around sixth grade I suddenly developed a bustline in proportion with the rest of me. I felt so incredibly conspicuous in the locker room- I was the only one with a bra. This malevolent girl, my nemesis throughout grades 1-6, made constant fun of me, stealing my bra and tossing it up on top of the lockers. I soon learned the art of changing from my gym clothes to my school clothes without ever being undressed. I also loathed gym class.
I skipped first grade, and due to my birthdate, I started school very early anyway. The result was that throughout school, I was always about two years younger than my classmates.
Gym class was a constant torture for me.
Always the last guy picked when choosing up sides? Check.
Teased and tormented constantly for screwing up and making bad plays? Check.
Belittled and ignored by the gym “teachers” and “coaches”? Check.
Being forced to shower with guys who were two years more, ahem, mature than me? Check.
The thing I hated worst (not my worst experience by far, which I don’t feel like talking about, just the thing that seemed most unfair) was freshman high school track. The gym class broke into intramural teams and competed. Everyone had to participate in an event, and the best athlete was the team captain and made all the assignments. The good athletes and the popular kids got the fun and easy events, and the worst athletes got marathon, which was a punishment detail and an event that everyone wrote off anyway. So imagine an out-of-shape, unmotivated, 12-year-old competing in the mile run against high-school kids.
From what I read here it seems that gym has gotten a lot more humane lately. Thank God.
Interesting. I never minded gym all that much.
Now, I was certainly not a jock. In fact, I was usually the last one chosen. That never bothered me – I just figured no one really knew how good I really was. (Not very good, but good enough to hold my own given the right circumstances.)
The gym teachers in my school were never sadistic (tough, maybe, but not cruel, and quick to stop things if you said anything detrimental to another student). We had to struggle through the Marine Corps Fitness Test (I was always at the bottom of the class) and once did 200 situps over the course of a week (I was pretty sore afterwards). We also didn’t take showers, so there was no teasing in that respect.
The only thing people complained about was the square dancing.
Oh, man, gym class. Has anything turned more kids away from exercise and physical fitness?
Gym class was years of low-grade suckage. My main humiliation: I can’t jump rope. I get tangled up and fall down. Every time. Really, what kind of schmuck can’t jump rope? Fortunately, since graduating from HS, no one has asked me to, proving that jump rope, like calculus, has very little real world application. 
My gym teachers weren’t sadistic, just burned out and apathetic. We had one real sleazy one, though, who would skeeze on all the girls on the soccer team. Ewww.
I’ve said this before but:
Dirty old man gym teacher. Wore white swimming trunks. Made us wait until three minutes before the end of the period to get out of the swimming pool and refused to write us late passes. Came into the girl’s shower room (which wasn’t too bad, since all we were doing was warming up/washing our hair in our bathing suits, but STILL) and just a general mean SOB.
In elementary school I had the scooters. I absolutely loved those things, they made it the best gym classes ever. If they had Scooter Gym where all you did was play with those, I’d have it every semester! (That and the ropes. I loved the ropes, except when they burned my hands.)
I recalled some more from former days.
In elementary school I remember my teacher was really tough. Once, in second grade, we were playing with frisbees and I was hit on the head. I fell backwards–this was a hard frisbee and I was a small kid–and got up, then went to tell the teacher. She made me keep playing throughout the class. After class I went to the nurse and saw a bright red mark on my forehead. She fussed over me and sent me home. Sigh.
Every year my elementary school would hold a relay event for all the kids in PE, which was every kid except first grade and kindergarten. Lots of these involved water. I wear hearing aids and I was always extremely nervous about getting them close to water but the teachers always made me do it. At least nothing ever happened.
This isn’t PE-related, but it was kind of a PE event. In my home state every year the football team has a kind of kid-related activity thing, where we participate in various events with the players and stuff. When I was 12 I went to do it. OK…pro football players can throw footballs friggin’ HARD. In the very first activity one of 'em threw it at me, and it bounced off my hands, landing on the ground. My middle finger really hurt, but when I told one of them, he told me to “suck it up, girl!” Awright, whatever. At lunchtime, I went to my parents and they took me to the medical guy they had on staff. Turned out my finger was jammed. Argh.
I had totally forgotten the existence of scooters! I think my school threw them away after the first semester of my first grade year, because I have only the dimmest memory of them. Lots of pinched fingers with those babies!
From a previous thread, I give you the most horrible gym-related story ever.
In case that link doesn’t go directly to the post, the story I’m referring to is in Spoons’ first post to the thread, early in the first page. As if you couldn’t tell!