Something I've been doing a lot of lately is running—mostly this
newspaper into the ground.

In a completely unrelated note, I've actually also been attempting to
stay in shape by regularly taking fierce jogs. I attribute my recent
quasi healthy exploits mostly to boredom and lack of a working
television set. Plus I really like to have a reason to take a shower
(bower).

In semesters past, I've made a fairly regular habit of running a
couple of miles a night. I choose night because it's cooler. I also
choose night because it's darker, and in the dark it's harder for
drivers and other pedestrians to see the circumference of my wimpy
girl arms and chest hair. Keep in mind that "hair" is also a singular
noun.

When I was in high school, I was your standard athletic teenager. In
summers I would run through sprinklers and I remember one time I
played "Final Fantasy VIII" for six straight hours. Eventually, I also
ran varsity track. I chose track because I could run like the wind.
And I'm talking old school the wind. The wind before it got all its
medals taken away for testing positive for anabolic steroids.
Unfortunately, pretty much everyone else from other schools was better
than me. I did, however, place in a few races and jumping events. One
of my most prized trophies is the XXXXL T-shirt I won for placing
second in the long jump my junior year. I was so excited/cocky that I
put on the shirt, danced and laughed as my fellow competitors left the
field. I then cheered as the men's events finally began.

The point of all of this is to attempt to save face as I set up one of
my favorite high school stories. This one took place in P.E., my
official least favorite class of all time—and I've taken "Study
Skills," a class where we once devoted a week to dissecting the
difference between true and false. In high school I had kind of an
unspoken rivalry with my P.E. teacher. At least for me it was unspoken
because I was so scared of the man. He was actually pretty spoken.
Mostly about how my name wasn't written big enough on my shorts or how
they were slightly off tint with regulation school color. I kept
getting the feeling that my coach hated me. I was clued into this
hatred when the following conversation took place one afternoon in the
locker room.

   Coach: You left the football outside.
   Me: Oops! I'll run out and—
   Coach: I hate you.

Every P.E. class began the same way. I'd show up late, get undressed,
get teased for having tight boxers, join the mob of people pointing to
the giant turd that nobody ever flushed from the locker room toilet
then finally head to the gym. All this always took up half the class.
Once in the gym, we'd form stretch lines where we didn't stretch so
much as ogle girls on the other side of the gym doing one of two
activities:

  1. Nothing or...
  2. Square dancing

One day as I watched the girls line up to turn in their weeky
"feminine problems" note to their coach, our coach announced we'd be
playing softball. This was good news to about 94 percent of the class,
because that approximate percentage of the class played varsity
baseball for my high school. This was not good news for me because
baseball is easily one of my weakest sports, falling second only to
T-ball.

We went out to the field and I bunted a lot. I was pretty fast, so I'd
occasionally make it to first base. I'm feeling lazy, so insert a
dating joke right here if you want. The rest of my at bats usually led
to my team going on defense. It was at this point that I'd always
sprint to deep right field.

Near the end of the game, an extremely athletic left-handed gentleman
who played varsity baseball stepped up to the plate, spit and pointed
to me. I'm mostly adding this for effect. I'm only assuming he pointed
to me because I was busy making a necklace out of clovers at the time.
I heard the crack. The ball was soaring for deep right field.

"****," I said. "I got it!"

Other kids laughed because there was nobody else who could have
possibly "got it," save Mr. Fantastic. All eyes were on me. My coach
folded his arms. I had a flashback to junior year. To me in my giant
shirt. The long jump! Of course! I had the skills to leap up and catch
this ball and finally "rob" someone of a home run.

The ball started its final descent. Time froze and I jumped with glove
extended. But I think I must have overestimated because the ball ended
up bouncing off of my head and over the fence. My head burned from the
initial impact, but also partially because of embarrassment.

"HA!... HA!" my coach laughed mechanically from the dugout. "If we had
a camera, we'd be $10,000 richer!"

I buried my hand in my glove before jumping over the fence to get the
softball. I considered dropping out of high school for a second, but
reflecting on the humbling experience actually made me respect P.E.'s
purpose a little more. Plus I just had to see that turd at least one
more time.

 ©2005 Tim Landry