"We're going to the gym. Wanna come?" "You should exercise. It's good for you."
"The gym is really magical. You make friends there and socialize. Come on!"
All year, many friends tried to get me to enter the hallowed halls of the gym at medical school. I would merely say, "I don't do the gym" in the manner of Whitney Houston turning her nose up at crack. Some assumed I was fundamentally lazy. Others thought that I didn't have the energy because I never ate, and who needs to burn calories when you're never consuming any? Many thought I was a prissy girly girl, who hated sweating and weird body smells. Okay, I admit that the last one is true, but my gym-aversion is a much more complex case - going to the gym would be like revisiting a former life humiliation.
Dearest blog reader, do you remember the hell on earth that is middle school? Well, my own private hell was my middle school P.E. class complete with a Satanic torturer, Mrs. Collins, the gym teacher. In middle school (pre-growth spurt), I was short, awkward, completely uncoordinated, and the most unathletic person to grace the Carlisle School gymnasium. I was always, always picked last for teams. This was not because I was that weird kid with head lice everyone was afraid of, but because I was a liability for a team; my klutzy ways would guarantee a loss.
When that special time of the year arrived to do the Presidential Fitness test, I cursed the heavens and yelled dramatically, "A plague on both your White House, Mr. President!" Without fail, I always got an embarrassingly low number of sit-ups (12 in one minute) and push-ups (none), while all of the athletic girls waltzed their way through the tests.
"I want to get the Presidential Fitness Award!" exclaimed Saira, a lean dancer. I would scowl at her and think, I just want this torture that we call 'fitness' to be fucking over!
The horrific week would end with running the mile. My goal in life was to somehow "fortuitously" break an ankle or at the very least sprain something so I could get out of the grueling 5 laps around the gym. One year, in seventh grade, I was determined to get such an injury; I spent an entire weekend mustering up the courage to throw myself some stairs so I could get out of P.E. for an entire semester. I lacked the cajones though, so instead I aggressively bent my ankle a couple hundred times in a futile attempt to sprain it. I must have ligaments of steel, because all I got were leg cramps, which got me out of P.E. for a mere day.
When the dreaded day of running the mile arrived, I got so tired after the second lap that I just walked part of it. And as result, I was the last person to cross the finish line with the slowest time ever - 13 minutes. Ah, the joys of the American educational experience.
To be continued (with stories of my time as a field hockey player)...
--By Mariam, who finds athletic prowess to be such a turn-off in people.
3 comments:
From the picture you posted it seems your school was pretty intense with their sports. Maybe they were all mutants and you were just normal like the rest of us who didn't have mutant athletic ability.
I was on the JV soccer team and managed to fall backward and break my wrist which kept me from getting my drivers permit because they said i couldn't properly hold the steering wheel. So it's probably a good thing you didn't break your ankle otherwise your mutant athletic school mates would have turned you into some sort of hybrid half mutant. On second thought, that sounds kinda cool.
I can't wait for field hockey stories!!!
Tori, your mutant theory makes so much sense. My school was filled with pod people! Pod people with side parted blond hair and a wealth of polo shirts. Have you ever seen that Katie Holmes classic movie Disturbing Behavior? My school was kind of like that - with Stepford athletic preppy people.
In middle school I got a C in gym. A "C"!!! All because our grade was determined by running the mile in under 12 minutes, and I was not a runner. But now I go to the gym almost every day! You can work past your past gym problems and go on to be a sucessful gym rat. This will be wonderous because the socializing between med students you can observe at the gym is truly a thing of greatness rivaled only by the library or maybe doc watsons.
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