High School: Mr. Thompson

For some reason every school believes that sports is important. In fact, a boy who was sports oriented was treasured and pampered above all others. I had a basic disagreement with this philosophy, in that I felt that learning, science, history and readying were far more significant. It always seemed strange in my eyes, even when I was young, that the football team was the best funded group on campus, and the science club had to practically beg people for handouts. (In fact, this still does not make the least bit of sense to me).

Due to basic philosophical differences such as this, I never really got along with any of my physical education teachers. I wanted to learn (after all, that's why were were in school, wasn't it?) and they wanted me to "work at sports". Even worse, these teachers all had some interesting concepts of competitiveness and, in my opinion, placed entirely too much significance on winning instead of just playing the games.

My high school physical education teacher was Mr. Thompson. He and I did not see eye-to-eye on anything. By this time I was already convinced that
"physical education", at least as taught in school, was a complete waste of time. Naturally, Mr. Thompson took his job very seriously and thought the opposite.

Sports, to him, were very significant. A teenager who could play football or baseball was important to Mr. Thompson. I am absolutely sure that those students who were physically inclined remember this man with great fondness. He was certainly good at his job - promoting sports to his students and getting those teenagers who liked physical activities to thrive.

Mr. Thompson wanted to win. Winning seemed to be important above all else. Since I was not (a) inclined towards sports in the first place and (b) not good enough at it to "be a winner" in any case, I wound up sitting on the sidelines most of the time. I had to "practice" football and baseball on occasion, but most of the time I just had to exercise, run and go through the motions. I was not one of the "winners", so didn't get to participate much.

My most hated time of year was the "physical education tests". It seems that the state wanted to make sure that students were physically able to perform to a certain standard. I was never aware of the reasoning behind these tests: it seemed strange to me that the government needed to know our physical abilities (it still does seem strange to me).

So we spent days and days working up to the "event". We sweated and worked our butts off, exercising and sweating and grumbling in order to "pass the tests". We didn't know what would happen if we didn't measure up, but it must not have been good, as otherwise why go through all of the trouble?

The day that most of us (especially the non-sports minded, like myself) dreaded eventually came. Now we had "prove" that we had some physical abilities. Mr. Thompson made us run, stopwatch in hand, to find out how quickly we could go. We then did pushups (the number carefully recorded), pull-ups, sit-ups and a dozen or so other silly things. Our scores on each of these tests was carefully recorded on a form, which I presume was sent into the state.

For all I know, Mr. Thompson disliked these tests as much as most of us. I don't think these tests had anything to do with winning or competition or, actually, were in any way important. I suspect the man was just doing his job, trying to get us all to measure up to these seemingly important standards.

One sport that I did come to enjoy was wrestling. I only wrestled a few times (I was not very good so was not allowed to do much wrestling), but those few times I found it enjoyable. This was more of what I felt a sport should be. Although wrestling does have it's own set of bizarre rules, it was much more understandable to me.

I never comprehended the purpose of baseball - what's the purpose, after all? I was never strong enough to even have a chance at football. But wrestling, now that I understood. Just two people, fighting each other with skill, seemed to fit better with the spirit of competition. In fact, I came to love to watch wrestling more than any sport (save fencing). Two wrestlers, especially Olympic style, doing their thing are indeed something special to watch. The style, grace and skill involved is unmatched in any sport.

I did have gains from my time in Mr. Thompson's classes. Indeed, I learned to enjoy wrestling, and occasionally had some minor victory winning a race or catching a ball. What I had an issue with was not Mr. Thompson (he was just doing his job, after all) but with the entire purpose of physical education in high school. I didn't understand the purpose (especially of collecting the statistics), wasn't very good at it, and, well, didn't see how this was going to help me out later in life.

And that was my basic issue with the whole physical education thing. I didn't understand how it would apply to life. How would being able to do five push-ups help me land and keep a job (which was what was really important to me)? What did sitting on the bench watching all of the "studs" play football, shivering in the cold, have to do with anything? No one ever explained that to me, and frankly, I still don't understand.