Modern PE

Once a year at my school, for a month, the PE department runs a dance unit. All the classes do it. No basketball, no volleyball; all dance.

It is hugely popular with the kids.

I like to dance.

Helen and I took lessons for years. It all took a long time to sink in, but it did. After a while, we were taking the classes just to have an opportunity to dance.

We go to community dances fairly often, and boogie our shoes off when we go cruising.

It's funny how none of my current hobbies were part of my own student experience of PE.

Not exactly accurate.

One time, for a couple of weeks they made us square dance. Out of all the types of dancing in the world, they chose square dance. I know many people like it, but we didn't. It was poison for teenagers in the early 1970s.

How about martial arts? I've been doing them since 1981. That was 7 years after I graduated from High School. Why didn't I find them earlier? A couple of years before that single square dance unit in PE, they did a week or so of wrestling. That was it. Over a decade of doing PE, and only a few hours of wrestling.

You'd think if I were suited for martial arts that this would have acted as a catalyst. Why didn't it? They only showed us Greco-Roman Wrestling. Greco-Roman is the square dance of the combatives universe. You try and make the other guy fall down using mostly strength. There is skill involved, but to untrained kids it is just strength. The weaker half of the class hated it, and the stronger half liked it. I was weak. We didn't even get to try Freestyle, which is much more speed and brains based.

I also bike a lot now. Biking got even less attention than wrestling or square dance. We never, ever did anything in any subject area relating to bicycles in any way whatsoever.

I am a runner these days. Fairly often they used to make us run. I liked those PE classes, but they were not common. Usually we were grouped into teams to propel some form of ball or puck towards some sort of goal or hoop. Definitely the emphasis was on team/ball sports.

On exactly one occasion we were allowed to pick from a variety of PE activities. One of these was to go for a run. The run they designated was the least-popular of the routes. It went for about a mile, then straight up Mount Tolmie, and then back. It was a gut buster. It was as if they wanted to punish anybody who didn't select a team event. I chose it gladly; one of only a handful of kids. When we got to the mountain, I was the only one to actually run it.

Things are so much better now.

There is the wonderful dance unit. Sometimes the bikes come to PE. There is a weight room. There is a small climbing wall. There are whole courses dedicated to outdoor activities, like camping, skiing, and caving. They often have wrestling units that cover the several variations of the sport.

This year they've added archery.