I am ashamed to admit it, but the main reason that I despise sports as much as I do is because I just can’t play any of them. I’ve tried, I cannot throw, catch, kick, hit balls with bats, aim, run…. or at least I can’t do any of these well. It’s genetic, both my parents and all my siblings are equally hopeless at any sports game. So therefore I cannot bring myself to like them. I am used to being good at things. I hate things that don’t come easily to me. It’s sad but true.
PE lessons at school were what I imagine hell would be like. I dreaded those few hours every week where we would be forced to partake in some sort of team game, the point of which I never quite worked out. And the worst part is the whole ‘team spirit’ thing that a lot of people seem to believe in. They didn’t seem to realise that by doing nothing I was actually benefiting the team more then if I attempted to join in with enthusiasm. So I was forced to join in and hated every second of it.
I never quite worked out why they make PE a compulsory part of the curriculum. It’s not as though playing sports serves any purpose in life unless you happen to be lucky enough to really good at them. Then if you are lucky you can leave school and play professionally, or teach others how to play. Otherwise you leave school with an amateur ability to play a few random sports. Which is helpful how? No offence to people who enjoy sports but I would much rather have spent those few hours a week learning something that was actually going to help me with my future. It was a complete waste of my time and I was always very angry that they made me waste my time like that. I think they were partly convinced that given enough practice my ability to hit/catch/throw balls would suddenly come flooding out. I however knew better, it was never going to happen and I couldn’t care less about trying. I wanted to do something with my life, something useful. And it’s not even as though PE was graded… you didn’t come out with a qualification, just a few useless abilities, or in my case…. nothing.
There was one game that we played quite a lot called Rounders. It’s like baseball but for girls. The image of me attempting to join in was quite funny. I would stand with the bat thing and someone would throw a ball in my direction and it would inevitably fly right past me. So much so that I eventually stopped even pretending to attempt to hit it. Then for some reason that I never quite worked out I sometimes had to run round the little posty things and everyone would cheer with excitement and I would stroll round and then they would all sigh because they hadn’t got the points they thought they would.
Then the teams would swap and I would be fielding. I worked this one out quite well. You see most people are right handed which means when they hit the ball it goes left. So I cleverly stood on the right side thereby reducing the likelihood of the ball coming anywhere near me. And I stood really far back because very few people were actually able to hit the ball that far. However there was occasionally an annoying left handed person who was really good at hitting balls. It would of course come flying towards me and they would all yell in unison ‘Claire! Catch it!!!’ to which of course I would fall about laughing. I would watch it fall down on the ground to which they would all yell ‘Claire! Throw it back!’. Which was an equally amusing request. And so I would stroll over and pick it up and then casually stroll back with it and hand it right to the bowler. Just to really piss them off.
My theory was if they are going to force me to join in then I am going to make them regret it as much as possible.
Not that everyone minded, plenty of people didn’t care less about the game, but there were a few that seemed to think there was actually some purpose in it. They hated me. But I didn’t care too much for them and their sporty looking legs. Really Muscular women? Not attractive.
They once gave me award for PE. We had an awards ceremony every year and if you were getting an award you had to go and sit in a special section, but you weren’t told what you were getting an award for. The people I was sitting with were all convinced they were getting one for PE, but that meant I was getting one for it too, which seemed highly unlikely to all of us. We were all a tad confused. But it turned out I was getting one for effort in PE. Meaning that they felt bad that I was so bad and they thought if they said publicly ‘well done, you tried so hard!’ that I might feel encouraged to try a bit harder. I don’t think they realised I was getting straight A’s in every other subject… why would I care if some PE teacher thought that I did or didn’t put effort in to PE? Like I said, its ungraded i.e. it doesn’t matter. So I didn’t keep that certificate.
Disclaimer: This is no way meant to offend people that actually like and/or are good at sports, just to express my own personal displeasure at the area. If you like it, good for you, and if you are good at it, even better for you.
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