Tales from the PE Crypt
By Keiti | January 14, 2008
A blog post today at Notes from an Eclectic Mind got me thinking about my own adventures in PE while growing up. But before I get to that, I have to make the caveat that I was an extremely mouthy kid. And when I say “mouthy” I mean that I had virtually no filter whatsoever, especially with authority figures. I wasn’t a bad kid, but when I had something to say I said it regardless of the consequences and regardless of who you were. The only thing that’s changed from my youth to now is that I’m a bit more discerning about picking my battles instead of running off at the mouth all willy-nilly.
When I was in junior high, however, willy-nilly mouthiness was what I was known for, and there are two teachers who got the brunt of it. One was a PE teacher who drove me absolutely batty. We used to call her Mrs. Percolator behind her back (for no other reason than because it rhymed with her real last name - kids think they’re witty…). At any rate, most of the time I was able to ignore her, but that ended when we did the gymnastics section of the course.
Now, I’m a former gymnast, having started when I was 6 or 7, I guess. I was never Olympic material, but I had a good time with it and worked my butt off - I was never much into team sports, and dance didn’t offer me the aggressiveness I craved, so gymnastics is the only sport I stuck with for any length of time. I ended up competing my first two years of high school and got to spend two weeks at Bela Karolyi’s camp when I was 16. I quit shortly after that for reasons completely unrelated to Mrs. P, but definitely related to both another coach who I didn’t get along with and my utter pig-headedness.
Anyway, when we got to the gymnastics section of Mrs. P’s class, I was ecstatic. I was tired of the dodgeball and other ridiculous things that invariably found me being picked last and picked on. (To say that I was a misfit even then is an understatement.) Things were going along fine until a tinseka came into the mix.
For those of you not in the know, a tinseka is a cross between a cartwheel and a front walkover - basically, you start off in a cartwheel and end up in a front walkover. It’s not a particularly complicated move and it was one I was pretty adept at. All was going well until Mrs. P tried to tell me I was doing it incorrectly.
*sigh*
Now, I am not above accepting instruction - gymnastics was, at that time, the love of my life and all I wanted was to hone my skills and have a good time - but it’s a completely different story when I know I’m doing something correctly, having performed it for years, and some PE teacher (who isn’t a gymnastics coach) is telling me I’m doing it wrong.
I don’t remember everything that was said, but I do know it ended by my telling her something to the effect of if I was doing oh so incorrectly then she could get her fat ass out there and show me how to do it. That shut her up but good. I’m really surprised I didn’t get suspended for it. The infamous (at least in the Misfit family archives), suspension story involved a Science teacher (the one other teacher who got the brunt of my mouthy attitude), who took an instant dislike to me (the feeling was 100% mutual), and was all over going to the bathroom.
Maybe I’ll share that story sometime. It’s actually kind of funny.
Now.
P.S. I still haven’t gotten over the whole getting picked last thing…make sure you go enter the contest.
Topics: Life in General, gymnastics |