I loved doing exercise routines to music inside the gym.
I hated most of the idiot teachers–the ones who made us run laps in first-degree smog alerts, the ones who said the weather was never too hot for us to play outside, etc.
I hated other kids who acted as if they were playing in the Olympics and screamed at the rest of us when we didn’t perform to their standards.
As a kid, I really liked PE classes, circa 1970’s, because ya got to move the body. I was a smart kid bookwise, but was also pretty hyperactive, so running around was a good thing.
The main drawbacks: as a nonbridled tomboy girl at the time, who played baseball with the neighborhood boys, was pissed that we couldn’t all play on the same field, was pissed that I couldn’t join Little League Baseball. I played with the guys on our street,who were Little Leaguers, and held my own. Just wasn’t done then. Did play CYO softball ( even tho Not Catholic), on the chance of showing up at a game with a playing friend, they needed a shortstop, and I subbed and did so well they asked me on the team. I was really surprised, since I was known as a bookworm.
That led to playing softball in a different school/state for two years, the smallest player, and a year younger than everyone else. Again, I was seen as a brain/bookworm, but just loved baseball, and since I couldn’t play that, played softball. I couldn’t hit worth shit, was small, but could catch and run like a banshee. I loved playing the game in itself, but also hated all the sports “Hustle” herd mindset.
Aside from that, PE was always a welcome relief to me. Even with the tiresome dirge of uniforms and competiveness, ya got to move around some.
I took PE up until 7th grade and I really enjoyed it. Sure, running around the school wasn’t fun but that’s just because running for the sake of running has always been rathing boring to me. I knew the basic rules to just about every sport we played and I actually enjoyed some of the other activities like dodge ball. Over all it was a pretty happy experience.
Marc
For me it depended on what sport we were “studying” that quarter. I hated softball, football, soccer and basketball. I loved archery, tennis, and field hockey.
Loved it.
I didn’t much like taking out the “weaker” kids because they didn’t really want to participate anyway, but when we got down to the bigger, more athletic people it was game on. The only thing I liked more than getting punishing hits was giving them, be it football, dodgeball, whatever.
Dodgeball, by the way, is one of the best games on the planet when you’re playing people who want to play. I once saw a guy half my size catch one of my throws- it literally kicked his feet up in the air and knocked him on his back. What did he do? He got up, brushed off, and kept playing. That’s when dodgeball is fun. It sucks when there’s a lot of silly crying.
I loathed PE until I got to college. I was tall, skinny, and NO large motor skills. I was the perfect bad baseball/softball player - I couldn’t hit, catch, or run well enough to accomplish anything. I don’t remember my instructors being sadistic, just my classmates. And sit-ups? Forget it! 6 years of being in a Milwaukee Brace for scoliosis ended that as a real possibility. I do recall having a great partner for situps after I got out of the brace. She knew that sit-ups were next to impossible for me, so she held my ankles and kept encouraging me. I think I maybe managed 6 or 7 in the testing period allotted.
College was much better - they graded on effort, not ability! I took social dance and badminton. I was never much good at the badminton, but I got an A for trying hard. Social dance was pretty cool, especially when I got to dance with one of the guys who was a fantastic leader.
For the record, I still have very few large motor skills. Hit a ball - I can try, but I’ll probably miss. Knit you a pair of socks? No problem!
Hated every second of it. I was unpopular and unathletic and never knew any of the rules, and when I’m in a confined space with balls flying through the air, my first instinct is to wrap my arms around my head and duck. The whole thing was an exercise in concentrated humiliation.
About the only thing that was tolerable was long-distance running; I wasn’t fast, but at least I could finish in the middle of the pack by sheer force of will, and there wasn’t any teamwork or rules involved.
I liked it.
In junior high, if it was raining, sometimes the gym teacher would let us play Japs and Marines (there was no PC in 1967). The Japs were allowed to range the entire length of the gym floor. The Marines has to stay within the 10-foot mark from one wall. There was also a 3-foot line from each wall. The idea of the game was to push, pull, drag, manhandle, or otherwise get your opponent over your 3-foot line and they were “captured” and out of the game.
Rules: No biting, kicking, or punching. That’s about it. It got rough.
Sometimes we also played King of the Mat. Lay out all of the wrestling mats into one big square and, when the whistle blows, try to be the last one left on the mat. Guys did get hurt sometimes.
Senior high wasn’t as interesting, but it was OK. It’s also the only time I’ve ever been knocked out. My chin encountered a guy’s head during flag football.
Night night.
I had a sore jaw afterward, but he needed stiches.
I was a very good athelete in high school. Kept goal for the varsity soccer team and swam 100m backstroke in a minute flat.
I DESPISED gym class. I am incredibly clumsy, and not very good at teamwork. I was hoping to get college money out of the swimming, and gym class was nothing but a giant potential for injury. I was constantly getting yelled at by teachers for not trying hard enough, not being competitive enough, not being good enough. They couldn’t understand why I was SO bad at baseball, for example, or why during football games I just ducked out of the way. Or, the worst. . . I was/am a terrible soccer player in any other position.
I think most (if not all) gym teachers are also coaches, and this is why they suck so bad. The ways you motivate willing athletes who just need to be pumped up and unwilling students are completely opposite.
I hated 80% of it. The exception being the floor hockey unit and a game called bamboozle that involved bowling pins and foam balls with capture the flag elements thrown in. Always being one of the very smallest in your class, timid, clumsy, and having no appreciation for any sort of sports made the class no fun. Not to mention all of the sports equipment was meant for righties if there was a bias to the piece.
It wasn’t until I was an adult and diagnosed with asthma that I realized what a sadist my high school PE teacher was. The first 10 days of our 185 days of gym were spent running laps for the entire gym period. Even if you were out of breath and coughing (hey, those turn out to be common asthma symptoms!) you weren’t allowed to take a break, but were encouraged to “jog until you get your breath back.” I don’t expect a PE teacher to be an MD, but you’d think he’d have realized that three or four kids were in bad shape by the end of the class every day…
I hated it. I spent the entire class either bored or enraged, usually enraged. I was the smallest boy - in fact, I was smaller than most girls - and constantly harassed and insulted. I hated the runs where other kids would trip or punch me. I hated the “flag” football where the kids alway tackled ( while the teachers watched and didn’t care ), especially since the largest kid in the class always came after me. I hated the fights, the lectures from one teacher that the big students should keep the little students “in their place”, running in the summer sun while the girls got to go inside, having things thrown at me, and in general everything. I spent most of the class daydreaming about machinegunning the other students - it’s probable a good thing my parents didn’t have guns. Hell, I had dreams about killing them; repeatedly.
Reading other peoples post I noticed swimming, showering, and in alot of posts. My school didn’t have a pool;when the school was built the board opted for auto and metal shops (20 years later they opted for a clocktower instead 
). If don’t think I’d have minded swimming. We had fully functional showers but showering wasn’t required. Sports teams used them after practice and occasionally a few jocks would if they had a morning class. Otherwise the unwritten code of conduct was; never take of your underwear, never have both your shorts and tee-shirt off at the same time, and use alot of colonge. Nobody ever bothered with the toilet stall though (off course they didn’t have doors :eek:). Every other activity the male teacher chose was touch football so I went with Mrs X. Of course for one unit they decided have tackle football and they didn’t wan’t boys tackling girls so we didn’t have a choice. That was absolute worst part of high school. As usual coach assumed all guys knew the basics of football. After one class I begged to be allowed to do something else (“Tough up”, “Just try harder”, “All the boys have too” etc). I then flat out refused to participate and ended up getting a U for that quarter (and in school suspension).
Reading other peoples post I noticed swimming, showering, and in alot of posts. My school didn’t even have a pool;when the school was built the board opted for auto and metal shops (20 years later they opted for a clocktower instead ). If don’t think I’d have minded swimming. We had fully functional showers but showering wasn’t required. Sports teams used them after practice and occasionally a few jocks would if they had a morning class. Otherwise the unwritten code of conduct was; never take of your underwear, never have both your shorts and tee-shirt off at the same time, and use alot of colonge. Nobody ever bothered with the toilet stall though (off course they didn’t have doors :eek: ). Every other activity the male teacher chose was touch football so I went with Mrs X. Of course for one unit they decided have tackle football and they didn’t wan’t boys tackling girls so we didn’t have a choice. That was absolute worst part of high school. As usual coach assumed all guys knew the basics of football. After one class I begged to be allowed to do something else (“Tough up”, “Just try harder”, “All the boys have too” etc). I then flat out refused to participate and ended up getting a U for that quarter (and in school suspension).
Shit, will a mod please delete my 1st post :o .
I loved it, though I also agree with what Omni said as well as a bunch of snippets from the gym-haters. In terms of enjoying myself at the time, I couldn’t have been happier than with dodgeball, basketball, capture the flag, etc, and the fitness test stuff didn’t bug me at all. On the other hand, as a “physical education” class, I never really thought it had that much value; it was just a “fun period” to break up the monotonous day. I should note I only had gym when I was in public school K-8, as my (much smaller, private) high school had a ‘activity requirement’ instead where everyone had to do at least one sport or other activity each school year. That worked a lot better, I think - partly because there were small non-sport-activity groups such as aerobics, cappoeira, and such that qualified, and partly because there was a sort of understanding that anyone who needed a credit and wasn’t athletic filtered into the JV track team. The student body was so small that all of us who wanted PE were playing 2-3 varsity sports anyways, and those who didn’t like PE as much got physical activity without it affecting their grade or destroying their self esteem. Also, since all the activities were after school, no need for communal shower use. I have somehow managed to make it through my education-age life without ever using a communal shower, thanks muchly!
I was lucky enough to have a great gym teacher in middle school; he was also the HS softball coach, and he had much more of a clue about the fact that there were, in fact, people who WEREN’T comfortable in gym than any of the other teachers we had. Once a month, he would organize a sort of “sports night” at school: it would be a Friday night, you had to bring a signed permission slip and two dollars, and it was all athletics from 6:30-9:00 followed by drinks and snacks from 9:00-9:30 while parents got there to pick everyone up. All the people who came would be divided into six or eight teams, and you’d move from station to station: dodgeball, basketball, volleyball, whatever else he felt like doing that night. He would pay a few of the more responsible girls on his softball team about ten bucks to ref and make sure no one got hurt, and for the most part people listened and followed the rules. It kept a bunch of junior high kids relatively out of trouble on a Friday night, and it was a TON of fun for exactly the reason Airman mentions about dodgeball - it was all kids who wanted to play. Not everyone was a GREAT athlete, but everyone knew the rules and wanted to be there, and that made it ridiculously fun.
British comprehensive (as in state/public school) between the years 1979 and 1984. As I lay on the ground with my collarbone shattered, howling with pain, the teacher came along, grabbed my shoulder and shook it, told me there was nothing wrong with me and I should stop making such a fuss. I ignored him and went to get medical attention.
No idea what things are like now. These days I’d imagine they’re a bit more scared of litigation.
I’m short, I have a spinal condition, asthma, and pretty crappy ball skills. P.E was fun, Games was not. I went to the kind of girls’ school with a “healthy body in a healthy mind” ethos and where the hockey team were usually also the prefects.
P.E. was 1 hour a week and involved dance, aerobics, gymnastics, yoga, pilates that kind of thing. Games was all afternoon on Wednesdays and meant hockey, tennis, netball, swimming or athletics.
In P.E. I could do most of it, and being shorter and slower wasn’t really a problem. Games was hell, because I usually ended up being screamed at for not “participating” while 11 large girls armed with hockey sticks bore down on me.
Or there was “swimming”, which usually involved treading water while wearing pyjamas and seeing who could stay afloat the longest.
Sixth form was better, we only had one hour of P.E a week and we could do whatever we wanted, so most of us went to the gym, or took horse-riding or self-defence classes.
Usually though I had a sick note, forgot my kit or did something else like being ballgirl, raking the sandpit or walking around the track with my friends rather than running around it alone.
Given the choice now, I’d still take an hour in the gym or an hour of an exercise class over 5 minutes playing hockey or netball.
On the whole I was OK with the field sports, especially as Rugby was the main winter sport at my school: I cannot do anything worthwhile with a round ball, but my inability to do anything much with an ellipsoidal ball either counted for less in a sport where there’s plenty of pushing, shoving and grabbing to do instead. I even made the 1st XV on one priceless occasion when they were suddenly short of a prop for a home fixture, and by playing out of my skin I managed not to disgrace myself.
(It was also one of those brush-with-fame moments. A co-pupil a couple of years below me had just taken up refereeing seriously, and so on my one appearance for the 1st XV I was refereed by someone who would later do one of the quarter-finals in the 2003 World Cup.)
Cricket was the summer game, and while I had no particular aptitude for this either, once I got over my fear of a cricket ball as a hard scary thing (it would have helped if I’d realized it’s only seriously scary when in the hands of someone who can whizz it down at about 90mph) I enjoyed it. It’s a great nerdy-type game with all sorts of techniques to learn and any amount of facts, figures and anecdotes.
Gym and most indoor sports I hated, and I was a dead loss as an athlete, which made it all the more odd that I should have suddenly found myself, at one annual sports day, roped in as a triple-jump contestant. There may be harder events to pick up from scratch, but that was hard enough. As smart calls it was right up there with putting me in for the javelin on the grounds that I liked cricket (and famously couldn’t throw to save my life).
Top of the hate list was cross-country running. I was abominably slow and completely uninterested in improving myself from last in my year to, say, third from last.
We are basically the age; I can’t even imagine a gym class like that here in New Jersey back then.
Playing Dodge ball I got slammed from both sides at the same time in the head. I went down and the PE teacher had another student make sure I got to the nurse Okay, just to be safe. I felt embarrassed more than anything else.
Malacandra: Your description of your Cricket skills and lacks of abilities, right down to the nerdy stats, matches my liking of baseball. You mentioned the techniques and that would be what we call the fundamentals; bunting, knowing when to take an extra base and coaching. I suspect we would like each other’s game after learning the details.
Jim
I have a near total lack of depth perception, making it almost impossible to make contact with or catch anything flying toward me. (Makes parallel parking interesting as well!) So naturally, I flat-out sucked at anything like making a bat contact a baseball, or catching anything. Still do, but at least I finally found an opthalmologist when I was about 30 that was able to explain what was mechanically wrong with how my eyes were aimed.
PE when I was growing up was one of those “Here’s a football, go play a game” scenarios for 12 years. Where I grew up, you weren’t free from the tyranny of The Rope until you got into college. Nobody figured out that the E in the name stood for education. If you didn’t already know what “ladder back and hail mary” meant, you simply got clobbered by the kids that did know how to play football. For all I could ever find out, that may have just been code for “Let’s nail the pudgy kid!”