You always hear people complaining about how unpleasent high school gym class was - getting hit in the face with dodgeballs or wedgied and whatnot.
So was gym class really that bad?
For me, jr high gym was probably a little more unpleasent but not a nightmare or anything. High school gym, I actually looked forward to (sure beat history) and I don’t even really like sports that much.
Swimming class sucked though. I hate being wet and I always had it first period so I itched and smelled like chlorine the entire day.
I have no idea - I skipped high school gym after the first year. Luckily I moved to a state where you only needed one year of gym to graduate, so I never had to make up for it.
Hated, hated, hated phys ed
Do I hate P.E.? Yes, I most certainly do. I loathe it.
I seriously love to exercise, but I hate getting dressed in front of people, I hate all the people in the gym because there are so many of them, and I hate doing exercises I can’t (or don’t want to) do.
Lucky for me, in New York State, we need to take and pass all four years of gym in order to graduate. :rolleyes:
I hated it as I was lazy, overweight, and shy and having to change out in front of others and then exercise managed to make me regret all three. Aside from my own self-consciousness and resentment at having to do squat thrusts, I didn’t mind it much otherwise though – it was just another class I didn’t particularly want to participate in but had to in order to graduate.
Conversely, I thoroughly enjoyed (and excelled) in history and the sciences and actively hated algebra and geometry. To each their own.
We had to take 3 years of gym to graduate high school. One or two of those years we got to wear the one piece blue snap up outfits. They were so lovely.
Gym was torture camp. I was small. They made us go outside when the temperature was above 40? degrees while wearing shorts. This seemed insane to me then and still now.
Every semester we’d gather in the gym and pick which activity we’d sign up for, well, I was sick that day. Little me, 85 pound me, got stuck in weightlifting class !
WEEE ! 12 mile run then weights, ya right. I looked at teacher and said, what’s the minimum requirement for me to pass. He said, walk, and stay out of the way. I did and got my D. We all learned I was unable to bench press the bar. The guys got a real kick out of that. Ya, I was only girl, all guys. Sounds fun, but wasn’t at all.
95 percent of the time I went to principals office, was because I forgot my gym clothes on Mondays.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, I did fail one semester of PE. Glad I didn’t go to school in NY. And DON’T ask how I failed PE. I have blocked it from my memory, but i’m sure a “negative attitude” had much to do with it.
I wound up getting into the handicapped PE class. That was great, we played cards and shuffleboard for exercise. I got in a little trouble for teaching the kids how to gamble, used torn up pieces of paper for chips.
Gym class, how did I hate thee? Let me count the ways:
Being self-conscious about undressing in front of classmates.
Showing visible signs of puberty at age 12, causing a lot of unwanted attention from the other boys, some of whom were probably jealous.
Being an unpopular, shy and unathletic student made me an overall favorite target for the usual gym-class shenanigans.
Getting flipped with wet towels in the shower.
Having clothes swiped by “tag team”, one who distracts me and the other, who swipes said clothing.
Getting wedgied and “pantsed”.
Always finishing dead last after running the mile, panting and gasping for breath.
Not knowing a damn thing about playing football (touch, not tackle, thank God), and having a coach who just presumes every boy already knows how to play.
Sucking at the sports I did know how to play (basketball, volleyball, soccer, baeball)
Always being the last one picked when team captains select players.
About the best thing I can say about high school gym class was that it was better than middle school gym class, mostly because there was less actual bullying involved. Taken on its own, though, it was pretty miserable.
Hate sports. Suck at sports. Don’t get the point of making everyone play sports.
It was unpleasant. Not horrible or particularily traumatic. Though now that I think about it, virtually every crappy thing that happened to me in high school was somehow related to PE. Is this what denial feels like?
Gah! It’s all coming back to me; hard-core aerobics to Michael Jackson music, beef-jerky like anorexic PE teachers, shin splints from running up and down bleachers, Tabitha H. walking around the locker room nekkid from the waist down fluffing herself and stepping on crickets, eeeeeeee!
I thought it was pretty fun. Only one year was required to graduate but I took it 2 or 3 years. I loved the first couple weeks of school when it was really hot and we got to walk down to the pool and go swimming.
Now, I’m horribly unathletic but so was everyone else in my grade. Plus our gym teacher was cool as hell, and he loved my best friend and I. Sometimes he’d ask us what we wanted to do in class for the day so we’d inevitabely end up doing “walk and talk”, which is pretty self explanatory, for the whole class period.
Once we convinced him to let us lay on mats on the floor, turn off the lights, and listen to whale music.
Ah, PE was good times. We did other stuff too, like play dodgeball and I would cower behind the mats because we got to use giant mats as shields. So what if I was in the wussy PE class! It was fun.
12 mile runs? Weight room? What kind of gym class was this?
Idonno. I liked floor hockey, volleyball and that kind of stuff. Square dancing and the big parachute thing were pretty gay though. So was break dancing (it was the 80s).
Gym was where some other boys threw my underwear into a toilet while I was in the shower.
Gym was where the coach winked and let the 7-8 varsity and JV jocks take control of the “squads” and yell and make fun of other less athetic people.
Gym was where the boys on my own team spiked the volleyball into my face, and where they insisted that I quarterback and then pigpiled me along with the opposing team.
I still don’t relax easily at the gym as an adult because I still expect boorish jock behavior.
It wasn’t too bad. I lack any sort of natural talent for sports, but I had a good time. The only things I absolutely hated were wrestling and swimming. But in between those abominations, we did volleyball, basketball, bowling, badminton, ping pong, etc. I was terrible at most of them, but it was still fun. The showering and changing thing never bothered me either. Sometimes a few guys would be assholes for reason but for the most part everybody just left each other alone.
High School? Nah. We only had to do two years, and the atheletes got out of it whenever their sport was in session so that left us lazy bums behind. I went to an all girls school with 45 students in my class. They combined the gym class with the two grades, but still one year, we only had like ten people in my class. It was great cos we really didn’t have enough people for teams for basketball or any of that stuff that I’m incompetent at so we got to play tag, and fruit basket turnover. I think we played dodgeball sometimes, but the only really organized things I can remember are volleyball and badminton. Oh, and tennis. Tennis was always hilarious.
-Lil
Our gym class was pretty well organized, but they never taught any of the sports. It led to some surreal conversations between Teenage!Taran and the gym coach: “Hockey, eh? That’s the one with the net, right?” “There are nets involved, yes.” “Oh good, I’m tall so I’m great at that game.” “Er…”
P.E. was my favorite class! In fact, recently I was going through a box of old papers my mom had saved and I ran across my last report card from high school. I had six classes that term. The grades were five F’s and an A in P.E.
So…Ok: I had P.E. first period that term. I’d go to school, attend homeroom and P.E., get a shower after P.E. and then cut out.
