So… when you get to Junior High… if there are still junior high schools… you have to wear a gym uniform. And if I hated gym in elementary school, I really liked it even less in junior high. We were requierd to wear the Great Neck North t-shirt and either gym shorts or sweat pants.
I have a very vivid fall memory of me freezing my butt off on the track, outside on a chilly October morning. We weren’t supposed to wear sweatshirts or jackets, either. Just t-shirts. Whose idea was this?
In third grade, I had come to dislike PE so much that I always wore shoes on gym day, because you can’t wear shoes on a gym floor. Just sneakers. Then, by January, I started to dillydally in the library. After our turn in the library, the boys were sent to gym and the girls returned to Mrs. Kravitz’s class.
Must have PE fashion!
So from January to June, I successfully skipped gym. I was eventually caught by a fourth grade teacher with a weak bladder, who wondered who I was when I was on the wrong floor of the elementary school. Grades 4-6 were upstairs and she had never seen me before.
So, the jig was up. The coach had no idea who I was. As a punishment for both of us, I had to go to TWO gym classes in fourth grade. He was forced to remember who I was and mark my progress. This story reached a semi-legendary proportion, as kids in OTHER SCHOOL knew “about the faggot who skipped gym.”
I blame this on same-sex gym class. I didn’t really like gym again until high school. In the winter months, we had co-ed gym. The girls were far less competitive than the boys. So then, I took the gayer sports–fencing, vollyball, gymnastics, and badminton–all in this t-shirt. I was very skinny and the shirt was like robe half the time on me.
But in junior high, my attitude about PE reached the zenith of ennui. All I really remember about gym for those three years was freezing in my overly large mandatory gym uniform.