Gym Class

Sitting alone in the cold middle school gym, the afternoon light pools on the hardwood floor. I stretch out awkwardly, and reach my arms as far as they can extend. Exhaling gently, my mind starts to drift to theorems and equations. Everything is still, and my brain is reaching and pulling toward an answer. My gray matter is strong and graceful, and comes quickly and surely to the answer. In my head I climb back down to the starting point, gather another problem, and begin the exercise all over again.

As the ticking of the caged clock grows from mute to thunderous, my mind slows and my hands begin to shake. I hear the approaching herd, and I lean down to tie my shoe; hoping to avoid the stampede that is surely headed my way. The battered doors open, the metal bar slamming loudly against the wood and shaking me finally from the last of my mathematical reverie.

At the head of the herd is the biggest one: the alpha male. He takes no prisoners and if you get close enough to look him in the eyes, you can see the murderous gleam lying there. He is bulbous around the hips and the midsection, his stomach spilling over the top of his gray clad legs. In the middle of his forehead a misshapen lump stands at attention, as if a testament to his ferocity and general meanness. Behind him stumbles his clan, looking strikingly the same as they fill the gym with their grunts. They huff and snort with idiotic delight as their leader makes crude noises resembling the expellation of excrement. It is as if he is showing his soul to the world: loud, expletive-inducing shit.

I huddle into myself, as if a tortoise weary from the general chaos of his surroundings. Despite my gross reduction in size, I do not escape notice. He comes toward me, stupidity incarnate, and nudges me with the tip of his battered shoes. His nudge grows rougher as I keep my eyes down and my body curled into my legs. This is it, I think. He will finally accomplish today what he has been trying for years. He will crush me until the air can no longer enter my lungs; until my fragile and meek heart can’t force one more beat.

And then I am saved as suddenly as I am attacked. I hear the herd back away as a rough voice breaks between their legs and lands like the gentle squawk of a macaw, “Ropes today gentlemen.” For a moment, I have seen my escape only to be cruelly fooled into security. Ropes are almost worse than large mentally underdeveloped middle school jerks; ropes are something that will destroy an already concave reputation. I want to stay on the ground hidden in my shell, but instead I walk to the back of the line and pray for a fire alarm, an F5 tornado, or for one of the herd to fall off of the top of the rope and break a leg.

But none of this happens, and as I get closer to the front of the line I can hear the taunts and jeers echo throughout the gym, each person impersonating the distant ancestors of whom they so closely resemble. I slowly step onto the blue mat, and stare at my tennis shoes. My lace is loose on my left shoe, but it hardly matters anymore. A loose lace won’t hinder me; my scrawny arms and unnatural lack of athletic ability have already laid the course.

As I look up the rope, the gym seems to swirl. The floor is now covered in foliage and the squawks and squeals of my classmates are far away jungle animals. I grasp the rope in my hands, and my mind starts to calculate the distance from one knot to another. I am Tarzan, this is my vine, and immortality through legend is my goal. I start to climb, never looking down.