Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
The fourteen minute mile
That’s how long it takes Jake and I to run a mile. The school wants him to run it in under 10 minutes, to which I have only one comment.
Are they insane?
We’re not built to run a ten-minute (or less!) mile. We have short little hobbit legs that are meant to run down supermarket aisles, maybe, but not laps. And certainly not miles.
It’s a funny thing. I can put in an hour on the elliptical trainer at high resistance and I’m fine. Drenched in sweat but fine. Put me on the road and ask me to run, and I’m miserable every step of the way. Maybe it’s because I can’t watch TV while I’m doing it.
I feel for my son. I really do. I had forgotten how nice it was to graduate high school and know that I would never again be judged on my physical prowess. Now we’re back in the hell of doing X pushups and Y situps in 60 seconds, bringing up the rear in the mile-running competition, and don’t even bring up the horror of team sports.
I wrote his PE teacher tonight . . . tried to tell him that we’ll do what we can, but we’re constrained by the genetics of the situation. I wish there were more emphasis on individual fitness, less on being able to meet certain abstract milestones.
They issue grades in PE. Grades! Whatever happened to Pass/Fail?
D.
Look at it this way: it’s the only chance that the lower 98% of the percentile curve have of leveling things against Jake in the rest of the curriculum.
hey, i’m 40 and i got actual letter grades in phys ed too. i don’t think that’s anything new, or necessarily because of jake being in parochial school.
my genetics were of the physically “gifted”, but i still hated that x situps and y pushups in 60 seconds bullshit. in fact, the only part of it i could be guaranteed to pass was the running the mile portion. i played HS basketball and don’t think i ever got better than a B in PE.
I really apologize for my long comments and talking too much about myself, but you struck a nerve and I want to share with you a true story. Don’t allow this comment if you don’t want to, but please read it. I am your substitute Jewish mother it seems. Here goes. Our youngest son was really overweight as a child and we fretted way too much over it (I am guilty). He was always an excellent student, but he spent a lot of time reading or on the computer and was not the athletic type. He was a very sweet boy, but very shy and sensitive. In 6th grade his school coaches encouraged him to join the wrestling team composed of 6th, 7th and 8th graders. I was very skeptical when he came home the first day after practice and announced that he had made the varsity and would “start†in the next match. In reality, he was the heaviest boy and the only one who qualified for the “heavyweight†slot. Having never previously wrestled, we had to watch in agony all season as he got pinned usually in the first few seconds of the match. But gradually he learned the moves and his matches went more than one round, although he never won. Finally it was time for the regional play-offs. Miraculously, he won his first match by points in the first of three rounds of matches in the play-offs. All the parents and all the students and especially my husband and I were delirious. He won his second match by default which put him into the finals. Heavyweights go last. So, it was down to the last match of the play-offs. It came down to his winning the match would mean that he would be the regional champion for his weight class and his team would be the regional champions. Everyone was on their feet cheering and crying as the match began. His opponent was ahead in points after two rounds. In the last round, he pinned the guy! His very first pin. There was not a dry eye in the auditorium. He was the hero who saved the day. It truly changed his life. He went on to win many titles in elementary and high school. The point is: don’t underestimate your child’s abilities. My children continue to amaze me with talents I do not possess.
man that sucks. i was always the last in the mile, and one of the first out when we had to do that stupid test in high school with the electronic beeps…you have to run across the gym before the next beep, and it gets faster and faster. and i cant run. at all.
i’m also the kid who purposely got hit/tagged early so i could sit out the rest of the game/round. yeah. i hated gym.
grades for gym is a bad bad bad idea. way to boost self-esteem there catholic peoples!
Dean: thank heavens A+s count for more than 4.00 . . .
joolz: Long time no see 🙂 and now we have a joolz and a joules!
Lucie: We were amazed at how well he did in Tae Kwon Do, so I know what you mean. Still, we used to try to get him interested in team sports like the youth soccer leagues. Zero interest. I’ve heard of parents forcing their kids to do things they didn’t want to do, figuring the kid might discover he actually LIKES doing these things, but that approach never sat well with either one of us. Fortunately, he’s the kind of kid who is open-minded to trying things at least once.
Shaina, he doesn’t have problems with self-esteem. And I don’t think it’s a Catholic issue, necessarily, since the public schools do a perfectly good job humiliating students in PE, too. War Ball, anyone?
i wasnt saying in specific jake has bad self-esteem, but i know in middle school/HS *i* did and would have been hurt by getting a bad grade in gym. I already feel lame cuz i’m so out of shape, don’t rub it in by giving me a grade based on that shit. and yeah, public schools are bad too, wasn’t saying they weren’t, was just poking at Jake’s school in particular since that’s what you were talking about. 😛