Gym Class - A little stroll down Memory Lane

My family moved from Wisconsin to South Jersey over Christmas break in 1973. From that time on, through the rest of my public school internment, I refused to get "dressed" for gym. I would have played their stupid games, allowed myself to be pelted with dodgeballs, if I could have done so in jeans and a baggy t-shirt -- it wasn't about my lack of physical prowess. It was about the locker-room. I had already learned all there was to know about how middle-school-aged boys could find a flaw in someone and peck at it until it bled copiously, like chickens in a barnyard. I already knew I was a bit chunky, from my baby-fat boy-tits to my girlish thighs. Clothing provided a kind of protective camouflage which the glare of florescent locker-room lighting would not. I truly don't remember if I had been uncomfortable dressing for gym in Wisconsin, but I had done it. In Wisconsin, though, gym had been all calisthenics and track; in New Jersey gym was all about team sports that I had never played before -- touch football, soccer, and softball. The Jersey kids were tougher, aggressive in protecting their team structures from outsiders. Because health class (sex-ed) and gym shared a line item on my report card, for a couple of years I could squeak by on the balancing power of my health class grades, but I finally failed gym in my sophomore year in high school, forcing me to have two gym periods as a junior. I used the yellow pages, scraped together $35, and made a doctor's appointment. Dr. Sugar's examination was thorough, and there was nothing physically wrong. When I told him that I required a note excusing me from gym class, he refused. I told him that that was the reason I had come, that I was immovable, and would neither pay nor leave until I had accomplished my goal, and he reluctantly relented, writing a note that let me sail through the next two years of high school without worries: "Please excuse Richard from gym class, as he has a mental block against it." Instead of gym, I had extra study halls my junior and senior years. Several years later, I read in the newspaper that Dr. Sugar had been arrested for prescribing pain killers and other fun drugs to patients that didn't actually need them, and I thought it was strange that he had made me sweat for a simple gym excuse.