June 24, 2000 -

Finally, Physical Education (or P.E) is no longer required in Georgia middle schools. It's the law, so you gym coaches are gonna have to spend more time at The Chamber (with bull whips sticking out of your asses) to make up for the lack of daily sadism.

Unfortunately, I'm too old to be affected by this new rule, as I graduated in 1995. But it makes me smile knowing that, given all the horrible things that kids are forced to endure, P.E. is no longer one of them. So if exercise and sports are your thing, you have the right to choose to enjoy them. For those of us who have other interests, you're free to pursue those instead. Since I'm one of those kids who was absolutely traumatized by his experiences with P.E., I'm wholeheartedly in favor of this new law. Here's why...

First, I should clear the air about the opposition. There's a growing concern about "obese" children, and that kids will no longer get the excercise they need if you don't force them to have gym class. For many reasons, I disagree.

Fuck forbid a girl isn't skinny. I think we put way too much emphasis on personal appearance and we're obsessed with weight loss as it is. There's something horribly wrong when a girl will starve herself because she wants to be Kate Moss. And taking gym will not help that. It's easier to humiliate a young woman by making her do sit-ups with the cheerleaders than to help solve the real problem, isn't it? I say if you want cake, girl, eat some cake. You are still beautiful. Now have another piece. Fuck Calvin Klein.

And as far as the boys are concerned, well, I speak from experience when I say that I felt weak and girly when I was thin. Only when I started to put on weight did I even begin to feel like a man. Now I weigh 185 and I can kick your fucking ass if I want to.

Also, the last thing that's on most teens' to-do list is exercise. Most of the ones I knew didn't want to be doing jumping jacks before 9 a.m., they wanted to drink, smoke and have unprotected sex. And they did, regardless of what coach said. You cannot stop them. Getting those guys out on the field was just an open invitation to skip school. And they did. Now if you like to play sports and have nowhere to do it at home, you go ahead and take gym. That's the beauty of choice. The only problem is now you won't be able to fuck with the people who don't want to "participate". They'll be taking (gasp!) art or computer classes.

Which brings me to an important point. P.E. encourages competitive behavior and violence. It's fucked up enough that America is also obsessed with sports. We pay our basketball players more than we do our teachers, for fuck's sake. As a youngster, I wasn't that good at sports. But because I was forced to play with the kids at school, I felt inferior as a result. I was too short to reach the chin-up bar, and I thought there was something wrong with me. Now, life is full of moments like that, and we're gonna feel stupid and humiliated no matter what. But if we can cut down on that shit just a tad by not subjecting kids to P.E., then I'm for it. No more getting smashed in the face with a dodgeball in the name of fitness, that's what I think.

And we're not even gonna discuss the whole locker room/shower/dressing out issue. Anyone who wants to force middle school-age students to take their clothes off in front of one another should be fucking locked up. And you all know it.

You know, when I was in 7th grade, we watched a video on Nazis in history class. The next morning, I went to gym class and we all lined up for our exercises. The coach stood at the top of the bleachers, screaming for us to count, and we all yelled in unison like usual. It made me sick to my stomach. LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! YOU'RE TOO SLOW! DO IT AGAIN! ACHTUNG! EIN, SVEI, DREI...

That may be going too far, but I just want to illustrate how passionate I am about this issue. In grade school, I had a racist redneck P.E. teacher named John Lee. He would make us run a mile very day before class, and if we didn't make it in the required amount of time, we had to go again. I had severe asthma at the time, and this was impossible for me to do. Still, he'd make me go again and again until I doubled over in pain and hit the sand, gasping for breath like the fish at the end of that Faith No More video. One day I fell right down in front of him, skinning my knees, and he still made me go run again. Crying, I told him FUCK YOU. It was the first time I ever cussed out loud. He called my mom, and she explained my situation. He told her he had a daugher with asthma, and she played all kinds of sports. That didn't have shit to do with shit, did it? NO.

So that's my little bit on this whole issue. If you want to require a class, make it one that teaches first aid, safe sex, and disease education. There's more things that are an immediate threat to a teenager's life than whether or not they can catch a baseball.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps we need to focus more on physical fitness. Serve Slim-Fast instead of milk in the cafeteria. We'll all shit blood everyday and look great. After all, if you're really a good athlete, you'll make millions. Reading Shakespeare is a one-way ticket to living in a refrigerator box. Hell, the faster you can run, the better chance you have of ditching the cops after you murder someone anyway.

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