My Note Excuses Me From Gym. Chin Ups Make Me Dizzy.

I've mentioned this before, but when you drive around, you fly by most of everything and never notice the details. Today, while the car was in the repair shop, I had to walk around. That's OK, I've walked all over everywhere and am used to it and in fact can enjoy it.

To get to the local Quickie Mart across from the Jet Tours travel agency here, I had walked past my old Goff Jr High school. I saw kids walking the perimeter of the grounds, in gym clothes, some not. I forgot I used to be their age, 13-14 then...they seem so small. I then wondered, “If they're in gym, why are the just walking around the grounds in a big square. I pass the gym instructor, who was telling some of the kids to “C'mon...walk faster!”

“Walk faster?” I think.

I stop for a moment to ask the teacher if Mr Such 'n' Such was still a gym teacher and was told no. He had retired several years back. I then ask what the kids are doing, he say’s it's gym class.

“Walking in a giant square around the school, is gym?” I ask

“You won't believe how hard it is to motivate these kids to do that he tells me. “It's different now. Back then all you kids were playing outside, burned calories and didn't eat at McD's five nights a week. So a major part of “gym” now is just getting these kids to move around some. I bet you never had “food awareness” classes in gym when you went...did you?”

“Nope”

“We do here.” He goes on to tell me that 13-15 year old kids here are protected by the law, cops and psychologists if they want to walk the hallways hand in hand, with their same sex boyfriends/girlfriends.

“You're kidding me?”

“No, I'm not.” he says.

(Not to sound like a homophobe, I ain't. My attitude towards everyone else is this: If you like to rape sheep, go ahead...do it...rape them all! Just do it in you own yard and leave me out of it. And please extend to me, that same convenience, if I prefer to rape llamas.)

“It sure wasn't like that when I was a kid!” says the bitchy old guy in me. I think in Jr High school, some of us dared to even ask a girl out then. LGBT issues? They were non-existant except for the revelation that Billy Crystal played a gay man on the 70s TV show “Soap.” I don't think too many of us even knew of horses of different colors then. Well, insular blue collar working class neighborhoods of Irish, Polish and Italians of the 70s weren't all that welcoming...not just yet at least.

What struck me, were seeing 14 yr old kids huffing and puffing from walking. I was no paragon of athletic abilities then, not by a mile, but I could walk all over the woods that extend into Seekonk. I could spend a blazing summer day down in those sopping wet humid wetlands with my friends, bolting sweat out of our foreheads as we rode our bikes or tried to tree a raccoon.

Well, I guess it's something if you can get these kids to walk around in a giant square of the school property. I didn't see any texting occurring either. No cells in gym!