Back to my obsession with adolescence, sports, and the body, in thinking about seeing folks at the reunion this weekend - it seems to me that if you weren't into sports, you were left to fulfill your physical requirement in P.E. P.E. was sort of a sad class for the non-gifted - having spent 2 years in P.E. before joining the tennis team - it was the minimum requirement - and mostly it involved suiting up and sitting around on the blacktop. Perhaps the occasional calisthenic exercise. Once in a while there might be a volley ball game or a game of horse on the basketball court. It taught me nothing about being in the body and I'm somewhat confused about its place in "physical education".

I have a memory of being in junior highschool in Mr. Bailey's P.E. class. Mr. Bailey was this hot young thing - crewcut short shorts, no older than 30 when we were kids. Ultimately he ended up coaching P.E. at the highschool and married a former student. He used to yell loudly and had a silver whistle he would blow on liberally to get people's attention. I remember (not) learning the high jump in his class. He modeled the form of it for us, first by demonstrating at full speed, and than by pretending to run up to the bar and slowing down his actions, showing how the right leg is thrown over the bar before the left hip follows through and than you are over. When my time came to show what I had learned, I ran directly into the bar, much to my embarrassment. Conceptually I got the idea, but seeing something done, doesn't mean living with that knowledge and integrating it on a somatic level. Mr. Bailey chuckled and really I couldn't blame him. The kids in P.E. were a very motley and unskilled crew, very disconnected on a body-mind level.