Waiting for Gouda

I remember the winter of ’86 like it was just a decade ago. I had just turned twelve years old and was able to look back over the last ten years of my life as I made the transition from reasonably cute little toddler to somewhat clumsy and awkward child to incredibly and painfully geeky pre-teen with full-on metal braces (They didn’t have any of this InvisaStraight or ClearFix or TransparaTeeth crap when I was a kid. If you wanted your teeth straightened out back then, you had to have sharp and ugly chunks of actual shiny metal glued to each and every tooth and then tied together with chicken wire off a giant spool and twisted around with pliers. If you were really lucky, you got a little package of tiny rubber bands to wrap around little posts welded to the hunks of metal from top to bottom, making your jaw bounce like one of those old rocking horses on springs whenever you tried to talk. This, however, is a story for another day.) and plastic eyeglasses that were almost always broken and taped up due to my falling on my own face for no apparent reason.

I know this will come as great shock to many of you, but it is, unfortunately, all too true. In my school days, I was not a cool kid. I know, I know… hard to believe. I actually spent a great deal of my time on the exact opposite end of the spectrum from the cool kids. Sure, I was bright enough, but sadly, and I do believe that somewhere in this universal truth lies the hidden secret to fixing many of society’s problems: one’s intellect counts for next to nothing in the seedy social world of the American education system. In the halls and on the buses and in the cafeterias of the world, it’s all about cool.

And I was not cool. This was absurdly easy to tell just by looking at me. But nowhere was this painful and traumatic fact of my life more evident, in no other place and at no other time was this unfortunate lack of mojo more perfectly crystallized and magnified than in that harrowing and hellish recurring nightmare specifically engineered to torture and ridicule the weak. Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Gym class.

Man, there’s nothing quite like assembling a group of mostly twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys at nine in the morning every other day and have the stronger ones pummel the weaker ones into submission within the rather loosely enforced confines of some game’s arbitrary rules. One simply has to marvel at the regular, ritualized beating and humiliation that is sanctioned by the school administration and overseen by some otherwise unemployable man who apparently genuinely believes that such activity is essential to the creation of proper young citizens. And I should probably point out that those who generally dealt out the punishment were not necessarily just those boys who were athletic, or who had earlier growth spurts. Instead, at least in my experience, it was the two or three giant, idiotic thugs whom, had they followed the admittedly traditional pattern of progressing one grade level per year, would have been closer to high school graduation than seventh grade.

So there you have the prototypical gym class scenario: A couple of sixteen year old morons (and I mean this in the strict, scientific sense of the word – do you know how dumb you have to be to fail the seventh grade… three times?), with the full force of completed puberty and all the hormones involved therein behind them, given free license to physically terrorize a group of weak and frightened children several times a week.

(There was one unit of Phys.Ed. which allowed for little to no actually beatings. This was the cross-country running segment of the year. You might think that a dork would enjoy such a thing, as running was actually something very practical, especially for those who often found themselves being chased. Nope. Not me. Wasn’t any good at it. Aside from the very real danger of tripping inherent in a clumsy kid jogging through the woods, I would generally get a little winded changing into my shorts.)

I remember one poor jackass in particular, by the name of David, who I’m sure had a hard life himself, what with his parents in and out of jail, living in a trailer park, steeped in a generally overwhelming upbringing of ignorance, or what the hell ever was his problem. When I was twelve, I really just wanted him to get accidentally shot on one of the many “huntin’” excursions he was fond of recounting. One day, after the morning’s rousing game of “flag” football, he was running his ignorant mouth as usual. I remember this so clearly, for whatever reason. He said, to the group at large, “You guys are lucky that ya’ll are my friends, or else I would beat the $&%! out of you.”

Well. Thank you, oh so much. No, really. You’re too kind.

And then, after limping off the court, or the playing fields, there was still the wretched, deeper level of hell to deal with. The locker room. Now, still surrounded by the same goons who love nothing better than to torture and embarrass you, they want you to deal with it all while naked. That’s just wonderful.

I for one, refused. There was no way in hell I was going to subject myself to whatever undoubtedly horrendous chicanery those delinquents could cook up in the twisted dark pits of their underused craniums after I took my clothes off. There would be no showering for me. No way. I tried my best to compensate for this possible hygiene deficiency by exerting myself as little as possible during the gym period itself. This, in turn, led to even further mockery and derision. But at least it was a mostly-clothed derision.

A twelve year old dork must nurture the smallest bit of solace, you understand.

I realize of course that not everyone’s Phys.Ed. experience was such a terror, and in fact, it did gradually get better as I got older, as I developed competent skills in a few of the proscribed activities such as softball and volleyball, and culminating in the crowning achievement of my high school athletic career: leading my team to the Senior gym class floor hockey championship. Ah… I can still hear the mighty roar of the… gymnasium ventilation system as it kicked on shortly after I scored the winning goal. Those were the days, my friends. *Sigh* Sic transit gloria…

Anyway, it was the winter of 1986, and in upstate New York that meant that outside, the wind was howling and the snow was drifting. From mid to late November thru March, aside from a brief week or two foray into the world of cross-country skiing (which was an absolute nightmare for yours truly, I assure you – here, strap a couple of boards to your feet and slide your ass around in the freezing cold for a half hour or so… yippee), gym class was forced indoors. Now, if you grew up someplace warm, like Florida, you might not know what I’m talking about here. (Of course, if you grew up in Florida, you’ve almost certainly got a whole slew of other issues to worry about, but that’s another rant for another day.) In the northern climes, when it came to gym class, winter weather meant just one thing:

Stupid Indoor Made-Up Sports.

After the gym teachers have exhausted volleyball, basketball, and floor hockey, and it’s only the beginning of February, they start to get a little desperate, and their bizarre imaginations begin to work overtime. They begin to dream up any old sort of mildly physical activity that can be done in the confines of a gymnasium. The results are generally some bizarre bastardization of two or more recognizable activities, and if they involve some kind of big rubber ball, all the better.

There was Longbase, a Frankenstein cousin of kickball in which, after you kicked it, you had to run from one large orange cone to another and back again before someone on the other team retrieved the ball and drilled you in the face with it. Also, if the kicked ball happened to go through the basketball hoop hanging idly at the other end, your score was doubled automatically.

There was Sideline Basketball, which was every bit as dull and silly as it sounds. You had teams of maybe ten kids who lined up on opposite sides of the basketball court while three players from each team played out on the court. It was just like regular three on three b-ball, except that you could “pass” the ball to your teammates on the sidelines. This didn’t mean that they came into the game or anything. Nope. They just stood there and passed it back to you. Wow.

There was modified dodgeball that had some obscure and complicated scoring system based upon body parts hit.

There was indoor soccer where you used a Frisbee and the goal was a wrestling mat taped to the wall.

There was team racquetball, which as far as I could tell, had no rules whatsoever. Just get out there and whack it around the walls for a while.

And on and on it went, the dark, long winter of our discontent.

Until one day, when the snowbanks were a little smaller and the wind chill not quite so harsh, we filed drearily into the locker room, wondering what bizarre activity the man with the whistle had dreamt up for us that day.

“Square dancing,” came the reply. Our reaction was pretty much universal.

You have got to be *&^%$ kidding me.

Square dancing… that’s just some weird name for some stupid football/cargo-net hybrid that came to you in a dream last night, right? I mean, surely you don’t actually mean real, honest-to-goodness square dancing, right? With the fiddle music and the do-si-do and all that?

That’s exactly what he meant. Holy crap.

Who thought this was a good idea? How was this possibly considered a viable option in exercise and fitness? You’re going to teach us square dancing? Well, gosh, I just can’t remember the last time I was at a freakin’ barn raising party and wanted to join in but could not because I didn’t know the steps.

Dear readers, I truly hope to God that this was some isolated New York country town occurrence. Surely nobody else out there was subjected to this lowest of low embarrassments. Please tell me that. Please tell me that this was just some small lapse in judgment by someone momentarily overwhelmed by some recessive hayseed gene. I just cannot imagine Chicago Public School children swingin’ theys partners ‘round and ‘round, you know what I’m saying? Of course, when CPS kids hear talk of “rounds”, they look for a place to duck and cover.

We made our way into the gymnasium and watched in horror as Coach (as he preferred to be called, although Stand-Around-And-Occasionally-Blow-Either-Your-Nose-Or-Your-Whistle would have been more accurate) walked over to the giant wall that separated the girls’ side of the gym from the boys’. He inserted a small, shiny key into a slot in the wall and turned it. Slowly, the massive wall began to move, folding up neatly upon itself as the gap widened. We watched in fascination and horror as the barrier between the sexes, that which we assumed would stand forever as a protective dividing element between two ideologies, strong and eternal as the Berlin Wall itself, came down.

And there they stood. In a line on the other side of the gym. The seventh grade girls.

Oh, the humanity!

It was bad enough to have these creatures ignoring people like me, or, upon rare occasion, scornfully insulting our admittedly shabby appearance, in the regular hallways and classrooms. But now… oh, whatever devil concocted this wretched plan deserved to die… it became apparent that we would be forced into some archaic and mysterious ritual that implied some sort of “coupling” or “partnership” where none rightfully existed. There would probably even be forced touching of each other, were my dim memories of The Barbara Mandrell Show to be trusted.

I’m certain now that the girls were probably just as mortified as any of us boys were at the prospect of engaging in this fiasco. I’m sure they were just as nervous, felt just as awkward standing there, contemplating us in a line across the way. But at the time, I just knew that they were considering their prospects. Judging. Classifying. Creating a mental list of preferences.

As anyone of a certain build or demeanor certainly knows, one of the absolute worst things about any sort of semi-organized youth athletic activity is the part where you “pick teams”. It was always the same six or eight guys who formed the core group on each side, the same popular bastards who actually high-fived each other when they stepped forward from the dwindling pack, as if they had actually achieved something aside from being not scrawny, leaving the rest of us – the detritus of the gym class gene pool – to ponder our dirty sneakers while waiting for the inevitable scenario in which one team would groan when such walking liabilities were forced upon them. It is a very strong man today who can remember being elated that one time – just that once! – that he was chosen second to last for the Bounce-Basket Hockeygolf game.
Now imagine this horrible, esteem-destroying process and sprinkle in some murky and troubled adolescent thoughts about sex and human relationships, and the trauma increases exponentially.

“Find a partner,” Coach said.

His instructions were echoed by the girls’ gym teacher, who, of course, was at least six months pregnant. Nobody really knew how many children she had by the time we graduated high school, but this lady must have been pregnant at least ninety percent of the time. Always knocked up, that one. Year after year. I always thought that perhaps she was in the wrong profession. Sex education, sure. Seemed like she might be pretty good at that. Well, okay, maybe not so much the part about birth control, but I’m sure she was well versed in the basics. But a gym teacher? It just didn’t make sense to me. On the other hand, however, Coach’s belly was equally as large.

Find a partner.

The words hung in the air as the two groups took tentative steps toward one another, quietly, avoiding eye contact. The alpha males and females strode a few paces ahead of the rest of their respective packs, as was dictated by their natures, which of course could not be suppressed, especially within the confines of a gymnasium. The rest of the amoeba-like blobs of nervous and twitchy pubescent flesh straggled a bit behind. Soon, the two forces met in the center of the room, much like a battle scene out of Braveheart, except at a much slower pace and with slightly less bloodshed. I somehow doubt I was the only young person there that, given the choice, would have rather endured a medieval mace to the head.

But no such choice was offered. We had to choose a partner. Oh, the pressure! Of course, some of the cool kids were already “dating” each other, whatever such a situation involves when you’re twelve years old. They found each other immediately and stood dutifully ready to start ho-ing down, with a minimum of blushing or mumbling. My partner-choosing technique consisted mainly of standing quietly with my head down and my wringing hands behind my back, perhaps hoping that one of the pretty girls would find that approach somehow endearing.

This did not work, naturally. Couples eventually formed, with much stuttering and caveman sign language. The slower and less decisive members of the group scrambled about as the eligible pool of dance partners dwindled, resulting in unfortunate and very temporary threesomes, from which one member had to be ejected by the pivotal party, sent scurrying back out to find a different, presumably less desirable, candidate.

And so the social hierarchy, already fairly obvious to any half-conscious observer, was quickly yet deeply etched into rock. For some, it was a monument to their own burgeoning popularity. For others, it was a tombstone.

Now, of course, there were not equal numbers of boys and girls in the combined class. Instead, it was something like Twenty-One Brides for Nineteen Brothers, leaving three young ladies and myself as yet unmatched. Even the smelly kid whom I would have sworn was at least slightly mentally retarded had found an apparently willing partner. He had been clever enough to seek out the girl whom he presumed would not have been picked otherwise, and his ploy worked. He had spared himself the co-ed embarrassment that I was experiencing via subtle manipulation of low expectations. Thus, the three available girls were not, empirically speaking, the three least attractive. They were, one supposes, just a victim of numbers.

Upon realizing the dire circumstance, two of them immediately grabbed for each other, and thusly created the only open, same-sex coupling the sleepy little rural town was apt to tolerate for quite some time. My mere presence had driven a woman into the arms of another woman. (Oddly, this same exact thing happened to me on campus my freshman year at college. Well, except for slightly less dancing. But again, this is another story.)

I finally achieved a partner through the cruel and unforgiving process of elimination. The lucky remaining girl looked at me and shrugged. We both knew that she probably deserved better. At least she didn’t cry or run away.

Now that everyone was sufficiently paired and separated into appropriately sized circles, Coach and, uh… Woman Coach, began to instruct us on the basic moves of square dancing, most of which I have luckily either forgotten over the years or blocked from my memory. What was eternally poked into my mind’s eye, however, was the image of their demonstration. If you’ve never had to watch a chubby sixty year old man and a pregnant twenty-something hold hands and sweat and puff their way through a promenade, consider yourself lucky. Even at that time, I knew that if such a display wasn’t, strictly speaking, a violation of some sort of local or state ordinance, it most certainly betrayed the trust that the community had placed in the school system to protect children from such unsavory situations. They do-si-doed, they allemanded left, they did a little swinging. I believe there was some bowing to the corner thrown in there, as well.

It was all very grotesque. I averted my tender eyes, hoping that some sort of SWAT team or other agency task force would kick in the doors or smash through the skylight and rappel to the floor with guns drawn and drag those two sadistic freaks away, kicking and screaming. Men in dark suits would come to interview us one at a time, to determine exactly what each of us had seen, and to make sure we weren’t harmed physically. Counselors would be on hand to talk to us. Our parents would be called to come pick us up, take us home. Perhaps give us ice cream.

But no. There would be no saviors. Now we had to practice these ungodly routines ourselves. With hot and clammy hands, we clutched stiffly at each other, trying to keep the maximum possible distance between our awkward bodies while still barely maintaining the minimum of necessary contact. We listened for our cruel overseers’ instructions, for when to bow and when to twirl and when to go to the middle and when to retreat. And the God-ever-loving promenade. Damn the promenade! Hold hands and walk in a circle? This is not an athletic activity! I wanted to scream. I longed for the days of organized team pummeling. Over and over again we tried, turning the wrong way, knocking into each other, swinging when we were supposed to backstep, accidentally kicking our neighbor, forming a bridge when a simple lock of elbows was called for. We looked like nothing so much as a group of netted tuna flopping about on the deck, gasping for air.

Luckily, my partner seemed to share my basic attitude toward the whole affair – an unhealthy mixture of bemusement and revulsion – and we even managed to share a smile or two over the whole stupid thing.

The coaches, clearly paying no attention to our efforts whatsoever, chimed in.

“Good!” they said. “Now let’s try it with music!”

Oh, joy. Because you know there is nothing that a group of young teenagers enjoys more than olde time fiddlin’ and asinine rhymes about hay and chickens and what-have-you. Coach went over to an ancient school-issue record player which sat on the collapsed gymnasium bleachers, the kind that comes with a green hard-shell case that buckled close and sported a lovely carrying handle. He set needle to a scratchy old record, undoubtedly from his own private hee-haw collection, and off we went.

Nervous, twitchy, hot, disgusted, bitter, afraid, traumatized… we went through the motions as best we could, only occasionally deciphering the rapid-fire country gibberish emanating from the distorted and tinny speaker. Basically we heard blah yer blah blah, blah to the blah, blah blah blah blah, blah-de blah-de blah blah. Now promenade.

We had that promenade thing nailed, let me tell you. The rest of the period consisted almost entirely of twenty pairs of kids standing about, sort of wiggling in mass confusion with the occasionally well-executed promenade. It was the standard stuff of nightmares, except I was clothed. It dragged on and on.

Prome-freakin’-nade.

Finally, time was up and we eagerly resumed our regular sexual segregation. We had survived, at least physically. Sure, there are some emotional scars that never heal, but for the most part, we had been through the valley of the shadow of Satan, or something like that, and emerged on the other side unscathed. Until Coach gathered us together to dismiss us.

“Just two weeks of this, and then hopefully we can get outside,” he said.

Some screamed. Some cried. Some fainted dead away. Some of us just trembled quietly.

I would like to point out that, about five years later, I actually briefly dated that girl, my first square dancing partner. Whatever such a situation involves when you’re in high school. I don’t know if she remembered that fateful first contact, but we never spoke of it. We went out for a month, or maybe two, our senior year, until her parents had her committed to a mental institution, at which time, perhaps unsurprisingly, things kind of rapidly fell apart. (This is absolutely true. But this is another story, for another time, isn’t it?)