Gym Class

I can’t think of any other four year span in my life that had as many changes as my high school years, and I'm talking changes on all fronts -- physical, emotional, social, you name it. Every one of these areas was at times jammed with one drastic change after another. And nothing emphasized the physical changes more than gym class.

At one end you had the freshman; awkward and self-conscious. At the other end were the seniors; confident and mature (for the most part anyway). It was almost literally boys versus men.

Our first year, when the school was brand new, the gym had some built in equipment that was supposed to build up our bodies and help us develop skills and confidence, and for at least part of the first year we actually used them, or tried to anyway, but first we had to put on our gym “uniforms”. Did the old high school up on the hill have uniforms? Thin cotton knit t-shirts and shorts with the school name and logo on them. I remember being cold and feeling damn near naked every time I wore it.

The new equipment turned out to be something akin to medieval torture. It didn’t build up anything as much as it emphasized what I couldn’t do. One was a chin bar that was about 7 feet off the floor. I could at least do something on this one. It was reaching it that was the trick.

Another was a pegboard that you were supposed to climb by holding onto one peg with one hand while you put the other peg up to the next hole, and then transferring your weight to that hand while you moved the first peg up. Then you alternated sides like that until you went to the top of the pegboard and back down. Yeah, right!

The last one was a rope suspended from the ceiling. The idea was to climb to the top and then back down. I think most of us envisioned a noose at the end of this rope before it was all over. Another thing I couldn’t quite understand was since the top of the rope was about 30 feet above the concrete floor, they put a piece of gym matting about an inch thick under it to break our fall. If you fell off the rope, the only thing the matting was going to break was your arm… if you were lucky.

Add to these the calisthenics we had to do, which were boring, and gym class really sucked. At least later I think even Coach Ratledge agreed and let us play dodge ball most of the time. That was at least fun, although you sometimes carried bruises for days.

On top of all this however, was the locker room. I think most freshman hated gym because of the locker room. Guys basically fell into three groups. Those who hurried in and out and passed up the shower; those who showered but found a secluded corner in which to change into and out of the gym uniform, and those who willingly risked being late for the next class and waited until almost everyone was gone before they even started.

The best part of gym class was you only had to take it two years.