High School Gym Class

What was your experience? Did you have to do butch stuff like shinny up ropes? Did you get a letter grade? My experience was a pass/fail class, where we did archery, badminton, etc.

• depends on your age....rope climbing was pretty much banned years ago when kids fell off and lawsuits started. We just played volleyball and then the gym teacher would parade around nude while we changed. After I grew up I would send the gym teacher's wife an anonymous letter once a year (she was the principal of a high school) detailing the events and saying her husband was a pervert. I got the idea from Oprah and her once you know you can't unknow stuff.....yes it was in Pennsylvania.

• I had a perverted PE teacher in high school as well. I don't think that I would want to hurt someone's wife like this though (by exposing him). He did a lot of ass grabbing and made sexual innuendos (to 14-17 year old girls) but he is retired now. He was old and bald when we were in high school, so he didn't 'score' while I was there. The hot science teacher screwed a sophomore girl though.

• Mine was rather easy, although I hate physical activity other than walking and hiking (I'm very thin though). I think we had three required semesters of physical education, and we could substitute one semester of health class for one of physical education. All the open youngling gays took that option. In the actual "gym class", the coach was usually quite lenient with the gay and nerdy kids, of which I was both. Our school was quite academically oriented and liberal, so there was not a huge push to make us into something we were not. The only difficult times in "gym class" were when the lesbian coach would substitute. She was a hard ass and actually made us do strenuous activity while belting out commands.

• I skipped it a lot, I hated it, dreaded it. It was HELL. Basketball, flag football, baseball, tennis. We did only sports, with chosen teams. I was always last pick, and bullied constantly. I was terribly uncoordinated at anything with a ball. I had an understanding art teacher that would excuse me from gym, to help him in the art room sometimes. I forget how it worked, I passed gym somehow, but by my senior year I hardly ever went.

• We had to play team activities. Our school year was divided into quarters and every year was the same thing: 1st quarter- football outside 2nd quarter- volleyball 3rd quarter- dodgeball alternating with basketball 4th quarter- softball outside Teams were picked by the dominant boys in the class, this led to the usual humiliation of the weaker ones being picked last. Calisthenics, weight training, running, etc were not done. Which is a shame because those are activities that a real teacher could actually record a students progress, rather than give a kid pass/fail based on whether they showed up, dressed and played. Why can't gym have non-competitive activities? There would be less trauma for a great deal of gay kids, geeks or shy kids who don't perform well in aggressive competitive jock activities. In my high school, all the gym teachers functioned as coaches after school, so their students who were also team captains on their teams effectively ruled the gym class as kapos. I hated gym.

  I%20know%2C%20Mary%21

• They all laughed at me.....so I killed them. (our gym teacher was kind of dykey too now that I think about it---I severed her in half)

  C.%20White%20

• R3 - we had a lesbian gamesmistress (as they say in the U. K.), too, but she was actually nice to us nerds. R4 - that was more my experience for 5th - 8th grades at a small private school, where we had to play soccer in the fall, and baseball in the spring in teams, ugh! Winter wasn't so bad as we often did volleyball.

  OP

• [quote]I had a perverted PE teacher in high school as well. I don't think that I would want to hurt someone's wife like this though (by exposing him). He did a lot of ass grabbing and made sexual innuendos (to 14-17 year old girls) but he is retired now. He was old and bald when we were in high school, so he didn't 'score' while I was there. The hot science teacher screwed a sophomore girl though. This sounds exactly like my high school, except the student ended up marrying the science teacher.

• I may be the exception, but I loved gym class! We did basketball, wrestling, volleyball, swimming, football and soccer. My favorites were wrestling and swimming for obvious reasons. I found the smell of the gym and locker room intoxicating- it was all hormones, Rightguard and bleach. I'm getting a semi just thinking about it.

• I will add that in the lower, primary grades it was torture because we were made to engage in team activities and sports. I'm a loner, so team activities were the worst. I, of course, was the last one chosen. I didn't mind that. What I did mind was being chosen at all. I liked days when there were uneven numbers of students present and equal-numbered teams could not be made. On those days, the coach allowed me to do some other activity such as carry the bag of balls or his clipboard. By high school, less emphasis was placed on physical education, so it was relatively pain free.

  R3

• For 5th - 8th for us, the boys "sports" teachers were regular ones also, who taught English, History, etc. They showered with us, too. (Girls had a dedicated "gym" teacher of their own, who as far as I knew did NOT shower with them!) High School meant we only had to change our shoes, nothing else. So, no showering required.

• Gym class was only mandatory for freshman and sophomore year, and then there were certain classes like "strength training" that were electives for upperclassmen (but only a minimal number of PE credits were allowed). We would do various exercises at the beginning of class - running, situps, pushups, some other basic stuff, and then we'd play some game - volleyball, badminton, basketball, baseball, just to name a few. In my high school, if you were a member of a varsity sports team during any given semester as a freshman and sophomore, you were not required to take PE that semester - though some varsity athletes still did. I was a member of varsity tennis (a spring sport) starting in seventh grade (at the time MN allowed 7th and 8th graders to play varsity sports - some states require varsity athletes to be at least freshman). And I was a member of the swim team starting in 9th grade, and the swim season started in late fall and went through end of February, beginning of March.) So, I really never had to take PE, but I opted to my freshman year, and then opted out as a sophomore.

• Volley ball and floor hockey.

• I quit taking it after 7th grade. I was smart enough to know it wasn't for me. My dad never taught me how to throw a ball or kick a ball or hit a ball or anything the rest of the boys learned how to do and that made me a major outcast. In 8th grade we had to have our parents initial our final class schedule and I forged my dad's initials to show he didn't want me to take gym.

• I went to High School in a pretty rural area. It was pretty tough. The first week you had your physical and weigh in at school. Then a few days later all the fatties would be called to the office and put in the special gym class held 7th period. Their class was geared to make them lose weight and was pretty tough. They spent a year in the weight room and running laps in the gym. Getting humiliated I'm pretty sure. None of them really talked about it much. I'm sure the original announcement of the loud speaker was humiliating enough anyway. We did cycles. It was a pretty rich small town so we had great facilities and lots of equipment. We'd do a couple weeks of soccer. A couple weeks of football. A couple weeks of gymnastics. Lacrosse, floor hockey, and basketball. I was pretty good at all of the except basketball. Floor hockey was the best to work off teenage aggression. The coach encouraged and expected a high level of violence. He usually got it with minimal encouragement. I lived in the Northeast and no matter how cold it got it was still shorts and a tshirt when it was an outdoor program like football(which was flag). The last three weeks of the year was always running. Being a rural town the coach had a four mile run through the town planned out. I didn't much care for that. It was pretty boring. We always had to take showers. Towels being handed out and a coach make sure you "scrubbed your nasty asses". Time to take a shower was no problem. A wet head from a gym shower was pretty much permission to be late to your next class. My graduating class was about 45 people but we actually had two male gym teachers and one female gym teacher. It was pass or fail. You had it every other day for the year A fail could keep you from going to the next grade. So if you failed the first half(it was graded every two semesters) you had to take it every day for the rest of the year. It was tough. The gym teacher was a hardass but a cool hardass type. A lot of profanity about fucking and drinking etc etc etc. It was the 70s and that's how it was. How it should still be. I loved it anyway. Of course in those days we still had a smoking lounge for the students who smoked. Even a part of the cafeteria for students who wanted a smoke after their lunch. Yeah a smoking lounge in High School. It was outdoors and you did it between classes but it was still called the smoking lounge. LOL I'd hate to be a kid today. In the 70s when you reached High School you were pretty much considered fully cooked and your parents started to back out of the picture. As tough as it was probably about 80% of the male students opted for the everyday gym class to get out of being hen pecked in study hall. I'm pretty positive it's much different now and is more trophy - self-esteem oriented.

• Thank goodness it's 2013, R15. Everything in your scenario sounds monstrous. I never had to take P.E. in high school. There were a number of credits we could use to fulfill that requirement - I took a medical technology course. I value that far more than anything I ever would have done in P.E. - I know a lot of other gay boys felt the same about their substitutions.

  Twentysomething

• I didn't have to take p.e.

  Band%20fag

• I junior high, I almost kicked my gym teacher in the face when I tried to do 1 pull-up. I couldn't even do one. Humiliating.

  Almost%20broke%20her%20nose

• But the point is R16 it wasn't miserable. It was, for the most part, pretty fun. Plus the teachers were more than the gym teachers. It was almost as if they were in charge of the boys and the discipline throughout their time in High School. If two boys got in a fight and were in the office you would hear the coach paged to the office to. He'd get in their faces in yell and give a few well place noogies or kick in the ass. When we got in trouble you got demerits and had to work them off under his supervision. Doing things like cleaning the locker room or sweeping the parking lot. I think it was a pretty safe, natural, controlled way for teenage boys to work off their aggression. Just a different time I guess.

• My gym teachers are why I hated ALL physical fitness until I was 50 years old. They were mean-spirited bullies who didn't teach. They ridiculed, bullied and ignored.They completely failed as teachers. Maybe they excelled as coaches, but instructors they simply were not. I switched high schools after freshman year. The second school offered yoga, dance, including ballet,juggling, weight training and canoeing. It was only pass/fail at that school in gym. Those things I liked because I was competing against myself or doing things that could actually be measured or helped to create a healthier me. The first school it was all about the bulliies/alpha male students picking the team, nothing explained about the games (it was assumed we all knew how to play football, baseball, basketball, etc) and the teacher thought nothing of viciously ridiculing us gawkier, nerdier kids who were not jocks.One teacher was something of a perve. He would strut around the locker room buck naked. It was strange. As teachers, they certainly failed. I left that town when I grew up because I wasn't going to pay taxes in that town and fund that school system. Fuck them.

• R19, let me understand this, the coach gave a student a noogie,actually kicked them? If that happened to me, my father would have beaten the living daylights out of them, and/or sued them like there was no tomorrow. No teacher should do that.

• I had straight A's in high school in everything but P.E. I cut all the time or just didn't bring my gym clothes and instead would hang back near the tennis courts and smoke cigarettes. I got an F in it for almost my whole high school career. The school threatened to not let me graduate because it was a required class and in my senior year I showed up maybe twice? But because I had the highest SAT scores and got early admission into a rad competitive art school, they gave me a pass. But quite begrudgingly. Though I did have to make up the classes at a local community college. (I think I'm the only person who had to go to summer school for gym). On another note: Our gym teacher was a closeted homo who oversaw the redesign of the boys locker room when I was a sophomore, and he put his office with a huge window right square at the end of the shower area so he had a perfect view of all the nude dudes. When it was finished the layout was the scandal of the whole campus. *Everyone* was talking about it and how brazen this guy was. I got pulled into his office shortly after the remodel for telling a fellow student to go suck a dick with sores. The gym teacher was yelling at me about what a loser I was when I gestured to the window and the shower view and said to him with a knowing wink "wow. nice view, huh?" He almost hit me. Then got me suspended for 3 days for insubordination.

• We had Phys Ed, full hour every day from 6th grade on. It was always the most fun part of my day, and after the first year, I really enjoyed the getting naked and taking showers with all the other boys. I was the only one with intact genitals, even in the deep South, as I was born in 1954 at the height of the infant male genital mutilation. Most of them didn't even know that part of their penis had been cut off, and they thought the prepuce of my penis was an abnormal growth. There was a lot of ridicule and abuse for the first couple of months, and they would even hold me down to examine my dick and would threaten me with pocket knives. We were allowed to have pocket knives in those days. But my father had always told me all about what had happened to him, and my older brother, and I was able to tell them that they were the ones that was missing one of the best parts of their genitals, and nobody is going to cut anything off of me. After a while they got used to me being whole, and I started to just enjoy looking at the different levels of puberty as we all developed during those first few years of Phys Ed. By the four years of high school, I was getting a lot of secret sexual pleasure by getting naked and taking showers with the boys every day, as well as enjoying the exercise, and the baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, tennis, and golf. You had to pass four full credits of Phys Ed to graduate, but it was no problem as long as you showed up and behaved well every day. Almost everyone made an A.

• those who can do....those who can't teach...those who can't teach, teach gym.

  Woody%20Allen

• Well r19, if you were blessed with the right level of athletic skill and "natural aggression", which it sounds like you were, im sure it was quite enjoyable. Unfortunately the goal of gym ought to be to enhance the physicaland emotional health of all students, not to provide the jocks with a opportunity to bully and dominate weaker students

• Thank you, r25. That's exactly what PE was, a glorification of the bullies and jocks.

• This was back in the early 1970s, and I hated gym. And, R20 pretty much nails the reasons: [quote]My gym teachers are why I hated ALL physical fitness until I was 50 years old. They were mean-spirited bullies who didn't teach. They ridiculed, bullied and ignored.They completely failed as teachers. Maybe they excelled as coaches, but instructors they simply were not. Mine also. Though, two of them were kind of hot. [quote]The first school it was all about the bulliies/alpha male students picking the team, nothing explained about the games (it was assumed we all knew how to play football, baseball, basketball, etc) and the teacher thought nothing of viciously ridiculing us gawkier, nerdier kids who were not jocks. Yeah, that too. It was miserable. I was small and thin with no discernible musculature or natural athletic talent. To say that I sucked at everything they put us through would be an understatement. All the alpha-male jocks excelled. One small bit of consolation: At the last reunion, almost every single one of those jocks was woefully out of shape. The quarterback of the football team had a huge gut. I now run half-marathons.

• [quote] not to provide the jocks with a opportunity to bully and dominate weaker students gee that is a smart statement. I remember thinking gym class was wear all the lunkheads who couldn't add 2+2 got their revenge on the kids who could. (although by senior year most of those kids had dropped out and the rest of us had fun playing more leisurely games like racquetball and stuff.

• we had cock sucking 101 every friday

• The anti circumcision troll reappears at R23

• R30, how is anyone a "troll" just for relating his experience in being the only intact male in his P.E. class?

• R25, at the school which I attended, the "jocks" did not take P.E. class with the rest of us. Their P.E. was the last period of the day, in conjunction with the sports teams. There was very little bullying at our school, as we stood up for each other.

• Me too, R17. Luckily, I made it through high school before my state stopped letting kids substitute band for PE.

• We had mandatory PE every day but it was elective in the sense that you could choose from any number of activities/units during each 3 month cycle. Some were solitary activities like fitness or archery but there were team sports too of course. The only unit that was required for all was swimming And believe it or not a hugely popular unit was coed square dancing. I took it and it was a hoot. All in all it was a pretty merciful PE program.

• I must have been blind. I had no idea so many were tormented by gym class.

• [quote]A hugely popular unit was coed square dancing. I took it and it was a hoot. I put off my required two units of college PE until the spring semester of my senior year, and I ended up having to take beginner ballet (I'm a guy) and square dancing. The former was taught by a cool Debbie Allen wannabe who gave me an A for effort; the latter was taught by a stereotypically dour lesbian who graded us as if we were taking Shakespeare or calculus.

• r22, sounds like you're just bitter and jealous of your gym teacher.

• I have pretty fond memories of high school gym class back in the 80s. The head of the PE department at my all-boys high school was so comically serious about it all (he had a PhD in physical education!) that I (and just about everyone else) couldn't help but find him endearing. To his credit, he was EXCELLENT about making sure that everyone felt included in everything. Far from favoring the best athletes in the school, he spent most of his energies and time encouraging the shyer, weaker boys. For example, during basketball rotation, he arranged things where the more athletic boys could split-up and play competitive games, whereas those who wanted to opt out would work with him in a clinic-like setting, just focusing on practicing basic shooting and dribbling. He managed to have this kind of setup with every sport or activity. He was also very vocal about pointing out the strengths of the jocks and non-jocks alike. He had zero tolerance for any kind of bullying. None. Thirty years later and now a grandfather, he is still at the school. He is often compared to Dick Clark for retaining a remarkable level of athleticism and youthful looks.

• High School gym was the worst. During swimming one time, I found a tampon floating in the pool and it was bloody. Prior to this I had my face submerged in the pool water.

• I spent most of my senior year ditching PE with another guy, hanging out in the woods next to the football field sucking each other off. It was a pass/fail grade, and the coach, who had obviously figured out what was going on, passed me.

• In my state, physical education was required, two periods a week. If I die in a state of mortal sin, Hell will be a seventh grade gym class in which the entire class is playing volleyball ... that thought has kept me on my best behavior for 40 years ...

• butch? ew, I hate to hear gay guys refer to a dude as "butch." the word is "masculine."

• I loved your post, r38. That coach sounds like a wonderful man.

• I second that r38. Nice story. Here's the flip side horror story to your experience. My brother went to a Catholic all boys school where they had a very sadistic PE person who invented a pool sport called maul ball--played naked of course since we're all guys here. Long story short my brother had a history of being bullied and in the course of the "game" someone took the name of the game seriously and grabbed his privates. He (my brother)turned a sharp elbow and broke the other kid's nose. Entirely justified IMO. He got detention for a few days but that was it. Lucky for the school my parents weren't the lawsuit types but WTF were they thinking?? And PE was taught by a "Brother" no less. Perv. I believe that was the end of maul ball. Hopefully the Brother was removed as well.

• It was a strange experience. Gym was required all four years. They balanced AP classes with low cost gym classes, so I had Track or swimming every fucking semester. I was fat, so I wore my swim trunks very high to disguise my fat. I've encountered classmates who still refer to me as the guy who wore trunks above his navel. I was tortured as a fag in the locker room until I freaked out on a few people. I was never suspended, but I do remember a lot of lectures. I never lost fights, but I always bawled like a baby afterwards. This was the first of three places where someone told me I was a white trash racist. If anything, I wish I'd learned that lesson with them. I spoiled two great friendships with my bigotry in my twenties.

• I secretly called it the Cock and Butt Show. I got to see every one of my hot classmates naked 2-3 times a week. I learned to sublimate the peeks at nude classmates and never worried about getting a boner. While I told myself I hated sports, since I knew I was gay, I turned out to be rather good at some odd sports like bowling trampoline, tennis and even flag football and dodgeball. Plus, the mid-day showers were a bit refreshing.

• I've told this story on DL before, I think. I went to a Catholic high school and I can clearly remember the principal, a Brother, frequently appearing in the locker room just as we were taking showers. He would pretend to be looking for someone with an urgent message, or some nonsense. I know we sensed something was amiss, but I don't remember any of us ever talking about it. This was definitely freshman year when we are all 14 -- disgusting.

• 7-12th grades in the mid 80s, where we had gym both years of junior high and the first two of regular high school. I don't remember much of the activities -- other than I was terrible at them -- other than dodge ball, which was just as terrible as it appears in movies and TV. The only PE unit I remember liking was fencing. Incredibly challenging and fun, especially for an uncoordinated nerd like myself. And yes, we had naked showers. I don't remember the PE teachers ever perving, but there was quite a bit of penis comparing, fag jokes, homo-play and one or two nude fights among us 15 year olds. I never had a problem with the showers, though I hated the rest of PE. Interestingly enough, years later, wound up running my local gay nudist group.

• R6 BURNS IN HELL!!

• "Interestingly enough, years later, wound up running my local gay nudist group." Are you trying to tell us that you're fat, R48?

• I hated gym class. I was always getting non-suits for not having socks. My brother and sister had to keep a notebook for P.E. as well as participate. No matter how well you did in runs or participation, if you didn't turn that damn notebook in...you failed PERIOD. Kids would steal others books to make sure they had something to turn in.

• I was in show choir, which counted as an athletic activity (dancing around in gold vests is a workout), and those in athletic activities didn't have to take PE (no one after 1980 called it "gym class," hon). I was so butch.

  PPSM

• PPSM: I graduated from high school in 1978, so I guess I can call it "gym", eh? LOL @ show choir -- we had one term of "music" that was the closest I ever came to that! As for PEE EEE class itself, I did either archery or badminton (or once, golf) as an elective.

  OP

• R51, what's "non-suits", precious? What's "non-suits"?

• Unwanted at R52-I graduated HS in 1986 and we called it gym.

• r54 When you get marked for not dressing for P.E.

• I'm not sure where to begin with my gym/PE class; the teacher was a neurotic ex-marine who obsessed about winning the state in baketball, which he did by browbeating boys who probably got pushed into it by nearly equally obsessive fathers. I hated gym class for all the bullies and creeps who grew up being homophobic. I hated the smell of the gym and shower room and always took a bath when I got home to get any of that smell off me. I didn't understand any of the sports, especially basketball or volleyball. It was worse than Catholic Church for moving around and not knowing when or exactly how. And the resentment is partly because the teacher DIDN'T TEACH. If you don't know the sports/games, doesn't it make sense that the teacher should tell you how it's done? This wasn't the case. And running, always running.... In March we would have Parris Island month which was something of an obstacle course with signs designating how many pushups, situps, chinups etc etc you were supposed to do at each station. If the teacher caught wind that you didn't do the necessary number or slacked off in any way, you got paddled. If you didn't take a shower you got paddled. You were tested on running the mile, climbing a rope (and I'm glad to read upthread that it was eventually banned), doing situps and pushups. He would sadistically schedule the situp test after the pushup test when everyone's abdomens were sore. During the wrestling portion of the class during the winter I always let myself be pinned right away until the teacher/coach demanded that I perform for at least 5 minutes. Even trampoline was a chore. You had to mark your shoes, shorts and shirt with your name or you were paddled--he would announce it once at the beginning of the year then further into the year if you didn't have them marked or forgot you were paddled for each piece of clothing unmarked. His inspection came without warning--I still recall him going up and down the rows of boys standing in military fashion with him weilding the paddle. Once after he brought us off the field too late to take a shower he brought us all into the gym just as the bell was ringing and harangued us about the requirement to take a shower and demanded that all those who did not stay behind and take whacks with the paddle for not doing so. I was no fool, I was off to geometry or whatever even if I didn't shower but there were actually dolts brainwashed enough to stay behind and get whacked. And if you were late for the next class you had to go to the office to get a written pass. I hope this small sampling is enough to illustrate what a hell it was, especially for those who liked PE and had no regard for those who saw no sense in it. If only they had been enlightened enough to realize that gym class could have been a useful class that taught that exercise and health were good habits to keep through life. Instead it was an endurance test to say the least. Yoga would have been a godsend. And yes I also went to school in Pennsylvania and I also sent my gym teacher poison pen letters years later telling him I was going to flatten his ass with his paddle someday, among other things.

  Anonymous

• PS This didn't happen to me, but was told to me by someone who went to school in a town in Pennsylvania about 50 miles from where I lived. This particular guy told me that he had gym the last period of the day one year and would sometimes stay behind and bounce the basketball around as others left and went home. One time he was the only one left and was about to leave himself and kicked the basketball into a corner to put it away. At that moment the gym teacher walked in and saw it. He took this guy back to his office and whacked his ass 5 times with the paddle and then hauled him up to the principal's office where the principal gave him 5 more whacks after the teacher told him he kicked a basketball. I am not opposed to corporal punishment if used judiciously, but can anyone explain what "sin" there is in kicking a basketball? And isn't 10 whacks with the paddle rather like overkill for something that trivial?

  Anonymous

• You can begin, R57, by learning what paragraphs are.

• Think of it as a narration not unlike those of James Joyce or ee cummings r59, if you have the intelligence to know who they were. Perhaps you must have been one of those who failed at all the important things academically but got A grades in PE, hence your browbeating attitude to this very day.

  Anonymous

• R59 is correct in pointing out the lack of paragraphs.

• Or perhaps a stream of consciousness, r59--in other words, if "lack of paragraphs" is the only thing you fancy that you notice then you are missing the whole point.

  Anonymous

• Or a soliloquy r59, anyway, I'm wondering just what one might conclude about American public school PE classes and the mentality of the students and teachers in them. Is it possible to connect the impulse toward the American gun culture with the damaging effects of PE classes?

  Anonymous

• r12, did you ever swim at Olson Middle School (the pool used for Jefferson?) Mid 90s maybe?

• What I mostly remember was the impulse to get an eye full when changing and in the showers while not getting a hard on. Jim knew I was looking at him and would strut his stuff. He is also the one that fucked me at 13.

• All I can remember about gym class is ALL that beautiful,bushy pubic hair in the locker room! Thank God I graduated before that nasty shaving trend started.

• Yes, r66, I'm glad you brought it up as I don't understand shaving pubic hair either. I can understand under the arms, especially for women, but what is the point of trying to look like a pre-pubescent boy? I was at the baths the other day and was rather amazed at all the men who at least partially shaved/trimmed the genital area, especially fat men--with no hair there they look like balloons that are not quite blown up.

  Anonymous