I was gifted at being non-athletic. This is just as much of a thing as being athletic and is just as rooted in DNA, nutrition and interest. Being a non-athletic person meant that I was the polar opposite to the athlete. My abilities could easily cancel out the abilities of the most gifted player on a team. It was a non-ability that was very feared in my gym encounters at school.
Of course at first there was no such thing as gym. In first through fifth grades we had free range playground time. There were however opportunities even in this for group sports. The first one I can remember was a game called Red Rover. What you did was take the group of kids and divide them in two. There was a captain for each team who picked the other kids for the team. The teams would stand a short distance apart and everyone on the team would line up holding their teammates hands. This formed two long lines of kids facing each other. The captain of the team would shout, "Red Rover, Red Rover, let (and here they would shout the name of a person on the other team) come over." The person on the other team whose name was called was supposed to run forward as fast as they could and try to break through the other teams line by crashing into the clasped hands of the teammates. If they were able to break through then they could bring back these kids to their team. If they could not break through they had to go to the end of the line and join the opposing team.
The first time I ever played this was in second grade. The playground teacher picked the two team captains and then the captains set about picking teammates. Apparently they were given tips on how to select the most valuable players. Those tips must have included not picking the scrawny looking ones because I was picked next to last. This seemed somewhat strange to me. After all, wasn't I bigger than my younger cousins at home? Couldn't I run the fastest? Wasn't I feisty? Well, they would find out. It turns out the captains were also coached as to who to call over. This tip was definitely 'choose the scrawny looking ones'. I got called near first. As I was hurtling my way over toward the opposing line I was certain they had called me because I was so 'game'. They knew I was up for the challenge. They knew I had the heart of the champion.
As I reached the line of the opposing team and did my very best to break the handhold of two of the players I learned that 1. this required far more than just running fast, 2. your opponents don't want to lose, and 3. you should probably have some strategy of going for the less robust kids when you make your run. I failed to break through and ended up on the opposing team. Well, this was obviously just a fluke. There were other games.
One of the other games was kick ball. The field was set up much like baseball, with bases and fielders, but was played by kicking a ball instead of hitting a ball with a bat. The pitcher would roll the ball and the person up to kick would kick the ball as hard as they could. If the ball went sailing up, the fielders were supposed to catch it, which would be an out. If it just hurtled along the ground the fielders were supposed to grab it and throw it to a baseman, or they could also choose to throw it at the runner. A runner was supposed to round as many bases as they could and also avoid being hit by the ball. Simple.
This game once again had captains who picked teams. I was again chosen near last. I think I rose slightly in the choosing ranks for this game at first because I was a fast runner and that is a bonus in this game. However, you don't get to run if you can't kick the ball. You would think kicking a ball that is rolled to you would be the easiest thing in the world, but that does not account for the strange hardness of that rubber ball. It hurts to collide with your foot. Once you know this there is a nearly irresistible urge to avoid kicking this 'ball of pain' - at least there was in me. When I did make contact with the ball it was once again an issue of mass versus velocity. I had nearly zero mass, which made it very hard for me to counter the velocity of the ball coming my way. Usually my kicks barely went anywhere. I became known as an easy out. I was no better in the fielding positions either. These position required that you be able to catch the hurtling ball from those capable of kicking with a lot of power. Catching a rolling ball was not that hard if it was kicked by someone like me, but some of the kids had true athletic ability and their kicks came past at sonic speeds. Plus, once you fielded the ball you had to throw it to hit the running player or at least to another teammate who could hit the running player. Both of these meant you had to have some accuracy, which is also apparently not something a non-athletic scrawny kid like me possessed.
So I gravitated away from such team sports and concentrated on such pursuits as hopscotch (fell down a lot), jungle gym climbing (fell off a lot) and playing on the whirl a wheel (got motion sickness a lot). This left me with one game I dearly loved which was tether ball. In tether ball there is a basketball sized ball attached to a rope and you tie the rope up high on a pole. The object of this game is to hit the ball so that the rope wraps around the pole until the ball touches the pole. Two people play against one another and when one person hits the ball the other person counters by either catching the ball or hitting it back the other direction. I played this game again and again and loved it but I seldom ever won. I had no trouble finding others who wanted to play with me though. Being non-athletic in a team sport pisses people off. Being non-athletic in a two person game makes you a valuable commodity. I only lost out when there were more than one person who wanted to play. That would mean we would play the winner which was never me, so I didn't get as many turns.
After the elementary school years we entered junior high and school took an interest in our physical development and instituted an official gym class. This was hell on earth for me. Now there was no such thing as a non-team activity. The girls coaches were always disgusted with me whether it was volley ball, basketball or softball. It is hard to say which one I was worse at, but once in softball I managed to field a ball so poorly it hit the tip of my little finger and ended up causing a 'greenstick' fracture, which the doctor who x-rayed my finger said had 'wrinkled the bone'. I was ecstatic because this got me out of weeks of playing.
Then suddenly the President became interested in our physical fitness and we were involved in some sort of contest. We had to do chin ups, sit ups and running. There was absolutely no preparation for this contest. One day they just lined us all up and took us out to the chin up bar. Girls did not have to do an actual chin up, but we were supposed to be able to hold ourselves up on the bar once placed there for sixty seconds. Here once again for no good reason whatsoever I felt I would be able to do this. I watched girl after girl accomplish this task and then saw one girl who was unable to stay up for very long. I felt sorry for her as I approached the bar. "That poor girl," I thought, "Being humiliated like that in front of everyone." The coach picked me up and I grabbed hold of the bar in the required overhand grip. The coach asked, "Are you ready?" and I said, "Yes." She let go of me and for about a second there I was, then gravity took hold and I had a few brief nanoseconds of my arms flapping like a hummingbird's wings before I dropped like a rock. It would have been more accurate to have called it the Presidential Physical Humiliation award.
Coaches must have some sort of grudge against the children they teach because that is the only reason I can think of for the game Dodge Ball. This game was typically played on rainy days and its rules were as simple as anything. The kids are divided into two groups and then they take turns throwing a basketball at each other from the opposite side of the gym. Since I was fast I was able to dodge very well and being super skinny also helped. However, this eventually meant I was one of a very few left. The teams were never evenly divided and I always ended up on the dwindling side. Very soon there would be just me and one or two other kids which meant I had to throw the ball and my wimpy throws could never could make contact with an opposing player. The other team would always have some brutish players left who would hurl the ball with demonic power so getting hit was like getting slapped hard.
However Dodge Ball was nothing compared to a truly awful game that was also played inside on rainy days. Indoor soccer. For this you have two players who compete in the center of the gym for control of the ball. All the other players line up against the wall and prevent the opposing player from kicking the ball against the wall by imposing their body between the ball and the wall. Yes, you stopped the goal by allowing yourself to be hit by a kicked soccer ball. Here again I believe the coaches were getting some sort of revenge because the center players would always be the roughest and most aggressive kids. When they kicked that ball you wanted to be anywhere but in the way of its destiny to the wall. This had a very unfortunate outcome once when I was playing. There I was standing against the wall when the two most athletic of the girls fought for the ball a few feet away. The toughest female jock on the opposing players team got an opening and instead of kicking the ball straight forward put some sort of spin on it that caused the ball to collide at super sonic speeds right into the side of my face. It nearly knocked me down it was such a hard blow. I happened to be wearing a retainer on my upper teeth at the time and the blow was so forceful it knocked my retainer loose. The sound it made must have been tremendous because afterward you could have heard a pin drop. The coaches response was to yell at me for not paying attention. She grudgingly let me sit out the rest of the game. I am not sure what hurt worse, the blow itself or the humiliation of the event. I spent the rest of the day with that half of my face beet red. The jock girl came over after the game and very sincerely apologized. I always got along well with the jock girls - after all I was no competition for them.
Then one day I came into the gym and they had all this gymnastic equipment set up. There was a balance beam, uneven parallel bars and a pommel horse. Now the humiliation wasn't just from competing with your classmates, now you had to contend with inanimate objects. Once again I am pretty sure this was just another sign of the sadistic nature of the coaches. Who in their right mind puts non-athletic people up on a balance beam. At first they had it lowered all the way to the ground while they showed us the routine we had to learn. We had to walk up and down its length and then dismount. It was hard to do, but manageable at first. Then they raised the beam. Now it was about chest high, in fact just high enough when I fell off of it to give me my second case of having the 'wind' knocked out of me.
On the uneven parallel bars you had to hold yourself up on the top bar and swing and wrap your hips around the lower bar. Didn't we already prove I was incapable of holding myself up on a bar during the Presidential Physical Fitness test? Every day I would try and fail without an iota of improvement. If I could somehow miraculously hang on and swing so my hips hit the lower bar this was just designed to give me a bruise in a new place. The set up expects there to be some flesh at the contact point. When you were built as skin and bones as I was your contact point was bone against hard wood. Not a recipe anyone wants to experience.
The pommel horse was a horrible, horrible thing. You were supposed to run as fast as you could, jump and land on a spring board and hurtle over the top of the dreaded thing. The landing was onto a thick foam pad, but to reach that you had to make it over the pommel horse. Once again my body rescued me from this ordeal by developing a strained back. I got to sit the rest of gymnastics out.
I have mixed feelings when I hear about them removing gym class from schools these days. The logical adult side of me says, "Good Heavens, how ever will those youths become physically active. What a bunch of sloths we are raising. Of course we should have mandated gym class." Then my memories kick in and that skinny, non-athletic ghost of my former self comes forward and says, "It's about time!"
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