As any un-athletic pre-teen will tell you, middle school gym class is the absolute worst. Not only is your body going through unprecedented changes, but some certain kids are treating your gym class as though it is the Olympics. For the uncoordinated, weak and the simply uninterested, this was the most hated class of all. Sure, math class was weird since they started to throw in letters of the alphabet to mix things up on you, but trying to avoid being smacked by a rubber ball was the most difficult thing your hormonal self ever had to do.
During any day of the week, at that certain period, you could feel in your bones that the basketball star of your school would somehow be able to make an unbelievable play while you struggled to dribble. Psychic visions of the volleyball headed straight toward your forehead haunted your thoughts in the class before. Gym class was almost a matter of life or death. Well, it was, if you took into account the death of your social status for not being able to run around the bases as well as everyone else.
One of the most horrendous parts of gym class was the social aspects of it. Once it was found out that you were clumsy or maybe a bit slower, you would be picked last for sports when the kids got to choose. No exceptions. Although, you might not have been dead last if some kid was even worse than you at sports. Not only did you know you were bad at sports, but everyone else in your class knew too. It was always brought up—jokes were made, rude remarks were frequent, and an overall disliking of having you on the team was apparent. The whole endeavor was just embarrassing and awful.
Perhaps the deadliest gym activity was the ever-looming Pacer Test. If you were unlucky enough to have to participate in this escapade of push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, and running laps faster and faster until you thought you would pass out, the realization that you had to do it every year from grade school until high school made you want to faint. You just didn't know if you could do it. Would the heard of 13-year-old athletes trample you to death? Would your funeral be held on a gym floor? These thoughts raced through the minds of those cursed with average to below-average athletic abilities.
Through all the misery and agony of having to withstand the torture of middle school gym, there were some perks. Not being as good as everyone else meant you didn't have to try as hard. Also, it was wildly entertaining to watch pubescent boys argue over who was the better player at a game the gym teacher had made up on the spot. True, the whole experience was horrible, but just be glad you escaped out of there alive.
