Yup, it's funny how I was a "stellar student" in every academic class, but in PE I was a surly little [expletive]. I would jog slowly where the PE teacher could clearly see me and then I would slow down and even sit when walking on the part of the track hidden by trees. When I went to a school with a real track without random crap in the middle, the jig was up. Then I just walked (wooo! 18 minute mile! You gotta TRY to go that slow).

I was one of those freakishly bendy fat girls too! My gym teachers were always stunned and it just made me want to punch them...especially the petite female one with the short hair and tightly wound perm. I'm guess I'm still bitter.

I wasn't freakishly bendy, but I sure was one of the bendiest girls in my class in those good old bad old gym class tests. Oh the V-Sit! How I loved it! I have to say that I think that Presidential Fitness Test is total crap, though, because did anyone's gym teacher ever help them train for these tests? What a joke! Were we supposed to learn how to do a pullup or a pushup without training for them? When the hell did we learn to climb a rope aside from three minutes before rope climbing test day? That is some bullsh*t right there. Playing kickball has nothing to do with training for the kind of stuff we were expected to do in the PFT.

Ug -- hated this! It was so all-or-nothing. I was an athletic kid, but you know why I could never pass? Simply could not run fast enough in the 50-yd dash. So not being a fast runner meant I wasn't fit?

I really thought this was a fast throwaway post (read: wouldnt get comments) when I did it last week...apparently Im not the ONLY one scarred from middle and high school gym classes :)

M.

I always loved gym class and physical activity and sports and running around, so I have no horror stories exactly like the above, but...

My family had just moved from a seriously ghetto part of town to white-bread central. And it was 6th grade, so everyone was entering that psycho phase of their lives, especially the girls, so I literally had no friends. I remember this nasty bitch of a girl stood ~11 inches away from me and watched me do the flexed arm hang (instead of pullups) and then started arguing with the teacher that I had my thumbs on top so it shouldn't count and I would need to do it over.

It's really interesting that those of us on both ends of the weight spectrum share so many similar stories of being singled out or teased. I was 5'10" in 9th grade, and I weighed 120 pounds. I was a freak. I was picked on by everyone for being tall, skinny, not having boobs or curves, the fact that my clavicles, ribs, and hip bones stuck out, because I was smart, artistic, musically inclined, for the not-so-styling shoes I wore, for the size of my feet, for the fact that my pants were never long enough, etc. etc. etc. And I hated myself for a very long time.

I slowly gained weight as I got older, but this last year was significant. I don't like it, and I'm trying to get rid of most of it in a slow healthy way which seems to be working.

But you know something? Women I met were markedly more respectful, friendly, and welcoming to me as a size 10; I could finally "fit in" or something. I can't help but wonder if this just has to do with equalization. Is the same mentality that makes girls trot off and put on the same sorority t-shirts manifesting itself in terms of BMI? Is it a fear of those of us on the outer edges of the bell curve distribution? What gives?

I actually have funny memories from the president's physical fitness test (okay, funny NOW but definitely not at the time, when I pretty much wanted to die.)

These include:

* Failing the sit-ups (crunches?) which I normally was good at, because I had a full stomach from lunch (right before gym class) and doing fast sit-ups would have meant repeatedly farting in the face of the poor girl assigned to sit in front of me to count how many I finished.

* Completely failing at pull-ups because as Jesse said, we never trained & I had never done one before in my life.

3. Doing GREAT at running, my worst ability, because I was in the lane next to a friend and I followed her like grim death to the finish line; I fell over and almost threw up afterward.

Our grade for that semester was based on attendance and our score on the fitness test, so I got "C+" in gym - try explaining that to your parents when you're normally an A student . . . .

Oh god, the Presidential Fitness crap was always the low point of my year. But excellent point about the fact that we were never TRAINED to do any of this stuff - how does playing dodgeball train me to do pull ups?

The pull ups were the worst - I'd always insist that there was no way I could do them, so they'd say, "Well, then just try to hang then" and I'd say "Won't work!" and they'd make me do it anyway. They'd get me up on the chair, pull the chair out, and yep - I dropped right to the floor.

I actually get really pissed off about all this stuff, because could they have actually TRIED to come up with something I could have ENJOYED? Maybe then I would have been in better shape if I didn't feel totally humiliated by the whole thing! Like 7th grade gym class, when I was stuck doing gymnastics. I remember being forced to jump the stupid horse -- running at it, hitting the bouncey-thing-whose-name-I-forget, and then smacking my midsection right into the horse. Every time. I even somehow convinced my mother to take me to the doctor so I could get some kind of excuse to get me out of doing gymastics, which didn't work (not terribly sure what I was thinking or how I talked my mother into this!).

What really pisses me off about all this is to fast forward to high school, when I went to a private school that forced you to take a PE every semester, but didn't offer it as a class - you either had to go out for a team sport or take modern dance. I did modern dance most semesters (which I was actually okay at), except the one semester they didn't offer dance so I joined the basketball team. And you know what? I wasn't terribly good at making baskets, but at 5'11" I was DAMN good at defense and I kicked many a butt.

THEN in college I got into ballroom dance (weird, I know), and was amazed to find I was REALLY GOOD AT IT. I could outdance most, both in terms of stamina and also grace/ability.

I just wish somewhere back in elementary/middle school they could have come up with some variety of activities, so that those of us NOT blessed at the standard-baseball-volleyball-whatever sports could have found our niche. Which would have probably totally changed my activity habits and therefore my health.

Okay, I just wrote a book! You can tell I have issues. :)