Monday, October 15, 2007

Bullet Baxter is real


This story made me laugh. What they need to do is make PE teachers a little nicer, a bit more understanding, not total cunts who enjoy ruining your life.

I loathed PE at school. I wasn't a fat kid - quite the opposite actually, but I was no good at it, therefore the PE teachers were foul to me. These bully boys in their red and pale blue Adidas tracksuits scarred me for life, and definitely put me off competitive sports or doing any kind of sport in public. I'm looking at you, Mr Jones and Mr Bagley.

Yes, they picked the boy on crutches before they picked me for their team. As the crowd dwindled to me and the other weeds the humiliation was piled on so high I may as well have been naked, it couldn't have been any more embarrassing. (This team picking thing is surely one of life's most hateful rituals. Even when they pick their helpers on The Restaurant I'm cringing).

The thing is, though I was useless at football and rugby, and not co-ordinated enough for tennis or hockey, I quite enjoyed basketball. I remember one occasion scoring loads of baskets(if that's the proper name), really getting into it and finally wondering if at last I'd chanced upon a sport I not only liked, but was also quite good at. But it wasn't to be. Mr Jones was busy ogling his favourites, and when he did bother to look in my direction I got the usual scowl. So that was it for me really. I did try, I enjoyed it, but my reputation went before me. So I hated PE. What was the point?

I even got a letter home once for not trying. My parents, knowing sport was not my bag just laughed.

Today, I can look back and laugh, but it's one of those childhood horrors that never really leaves you. So thanks Mr Jones and Mr Bagley, for putting me off sport for life. I can't take it seriously.

8 comments:

Clair said...

Don't get me started - I WAS the fat kid in games, and I think it's scarred me for life. Still, when we got to the 6th form, we got to do golf (golf!) and archery, both of which I was pretty good at. Get me in plus-fours! Can you believe it?

Clair said...

Oh, and I hate this 'Government must do something' attitude. If parents stopped feeding their kids shit 'because he won't eat anything else, and despite weighing 15 stone at 9, I can't say no', they wouldn't be too ashamed to do sport.

Sky Clearbrook said...

Bullet Baxter was ultra-firm yet ultra-fair. His predecessor, Mr Foster (played by Roger Sloman) was the real bastard.

It wasn't quite as bad as that where I went to (Queen Anne High, Dunfermline). My favourite PE teacher was Mr Morris who resembled a cross between Fred Haris, Blackadder II and Peter Sutcliffe.

That said, there was a real favouritism at work for those in the rugby team (argh). Strangely enough, they all seemed to come from the local Spam Valley of Crossford/Cairneyhill and were, in the main, the offspring of science teachers.

Valentine Suicide said...

All my PE teachers were vile as well, you've identified a trend 5C. I also was last to get picked for footie. Ugh rugby practice in the winter. The horror!

How's the gym going?

ally. said...

i hate to think what school would've been like if there hadn't been punk. now i could say it wasn't that i wasn't being picked it was that i waas sneeringly not joining in. i've not joined in ever since. (bastards)

Kolley Kibber said...

I was totally, utterly inept at any sports involving balls, crash-mats or vaulting horses, having no co-ordination whatsoever.

My secondary school used the 'learning through humiliation' technique when it came to sport, so by the third year, when it was accidentally 'discovered' that I could run quite fast, I had become truculent and surly about the whole thing, and took immense, perverse pleasure in ostentatiously dropping out of sport. I developed an everlasting verruca which I forged notes about, and when questions were finally asked about the origins of the handwriting on these notes, I just stopped going to the lessons.

By 20 I had done virtually no exercise for five years, and suddenly, for reasons still unknown to me, I started going to a gym and went running again. I was so unfit I had to run 'a lamp-post' distance, stop and be sick, run another, and so on, until I eventually built up some fitness. Now I couldn't be without it. But as for those hell-bitch gym teachers - Miss Duffhill and Mrs Hampshire -neither forgiven nor forgotten.

Mondo said...

I was never sporty - and didn't care who had the ball or who won.

But was the fastest runner 100 yard runner in my year,(not something I was intrested in, but could do it on demand)

The fitness fascists never allowed to me compete, as I wasn't the P.E teacher's pet.

I lost interest, they lost trophies.

Jon Peake said...

That's the thing, the lack of encouragement. It's a killer.

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