Last night I was thinking about what went wrong with my athletic career. All through elementary school, I was one of the athletic kids, I played sports, and enjoyed phys. ed. more than most. As I’ve said before, I wasn’t necessarily one of the elite athletes, but I was nearer the top of the barrel than the bottom. Then highschool hit, and I seemed to lose interest. Phys ed was a chore - far and away my least favorite class. I couldn’t wait until grade 11, when I could stop taking phys ed. I stopped playing hockey after grade 9, and haven’t been involved with organized sport since (though I did try out for a baseball team in grade 12, and didn’t make the cut - not surprising, since I hadn’t played in over 5 years.)

So, what happened? I think there were a couple of things that conspired to drain my desire for physical activity. First, I got interested in computers, and specifically BBS’s. I spent a lot of time online, talking to people, playing games, and not much else. My parents got a second phone line for me (and my older brother) because we were always on the phone (for the BBSs.) So, that kept me inside a fair amount, and instead of running around playing tag, or hide and go seek, or Donkey, I was inside playing Trade Wars and Pyroto Mountain, or talking to the people on The Asylum.

So, that accounts for my decreased extra-curricular activities. What caused me to hate Gym class? I think a lot of it had to do with my Grade 9 gym teacher. To him, Gym wasn’t supposed to be fun, it was supposed to be hard work. We’d start out by running laps for a few minutes, then we’d do pushups for a while, situps, jumping jacks, etc. None of those things are fun (to me.) So, I’ve started off not having fun, right at the start of class. Then, despite the fact Gym was pass/fail, we were graded on everything. How many times can you sink a layup in 60 seconds, how many tennis serves can you put in a specific area out of 10 tries, how close to the center of the target can you get. These are all individual sports, and that’s what I remember grade 9 gym being about. There’s nothing wrong with individual sports, but the key is that to enjoy them, you have to realize that you’re really competing against yourself. That was never stressed, or even mentioned, as far as I know. We were graded, and stacked up publicly against everyone in our class, and everyone in the other classes.

What’s that? You can’t flexed arm hang for five minutes? You have been measured, and found lacking.

At least that’s how it seemed to me. I don’t remember tracking my scores against my own previous scores, just against everyone else in the class. When you’re consistently 10th (or whatever,) you’re not seeing improvement, and so then, what’s all the work for? Maybe my competetive spirit is broken though.

I really wish that I’d realized all of this back when I was in highschool, because I associated Gym class with all physical activity, and found that I didn’t like it anymore. Instead, I should have signed up for a school team - football, or soccer, or something. Team sports always have appealed to me because of the community aspect of it, much the same way that BBSs grabbed me, because, while I’m an introvert, I do like working towards a common goal with groups of people. I really like playing multiplayer co-op video games much more than deathmatch.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I’m gonna make you an omlette!” - Barney