So good to see someone voicing this tragedy so honestly and openly but without rancour or blame.
PE was horrifying for me. There were many bad experiences but the worst was probably what happened when I purposely forgot my PE gear, as a way to get out of it having to do it.
It didn't work. It just caused me significant humiliation and probably psychological harm. My macho PE master made me do gym in just my vest, naked from the waist down. I was eleven years old and experiencing the transition accompanying puberty.
Yes, it was an all male session but I was humiliated none-the-less, jeered at by the majority of the class and being made to climb the wall bars with my genitals hanging out drove me to tears. I was also made to tackle the vaulting horse and hurt myself as a result.
If the psyopathic master thought that this would ensure I never forgot my gym clothes again, he was right. I never attended another class, playing truant on any day it was scheduled. Indeed, the one aspect of my high school education at which I excelled was truancy. I probably still hold the record for that school
However, it was not only that experience that repelled me. I'd had polio in the epidemic of '56 that hit England. I was fortunate enought to recover but was emaciated and relatively weak in my legs, particularly, for a long time. I also only ever had one working eye so found it virtually impossible to track a moving object or sight a small object from a distance.
My physical failings meant that when I was forced to play cricket, in those days without any protection but with a normal, very hard tennis ball, I regularly had to endure the pain of being hit by one, just to add to the mocking of other students at my inability to ever connect ball and bat or to run and bowl with any facility whatsoever.
I was also made to play soccer. However, as with cricket and other sports, I was always placed in the 'others' team. We were never taught the rules of the game or reason behind positioning. All we knew was that we were supposed to get the ball in the opposite team's goal. Because we played in assorted kit, as the leftovers squad, I often had no idea of exactly who was on my team and who was on the other. It was an appallingly confusing, mocking and hurtful experience. Those days of double 'sports' lessons as distinct from single lesson PE days, soon added to my absences from school.
Physically, the saving grace for me was my love of animals and hours spent walking and running and playing with dogs, who never seemed to consider my awkward gait a negative or to require some mysterious set of rules in order to enjoy vigorous and competitive games with me.
I had however, developed a distrust for and dislike for all sport and those associated with it, with only one exception - motor racing, which for some reason I did not connect (though I should have) with athleticism, fitness and the characteristics of most of the sports fanatics I had known at school.
It was, in fact, some thirty or more years after my school experience before I began to enjoy sports as a spectator. I now very much enjoy watching soccer, netball, hockey, tennis and athletics. I now understand at least the general rules and aims of most of these sports and admire the determination, strength, resilience and skill of those who compete fairly and for passionate feeling for the event, rather than just to 'win' or to make money.
All the same, that school experience was a horrific one for me and possibly contributed to my having suffered a lack of confidence, an inferiority complex and chronic depression for the remainder of my life.
I now live in Australia where sport is the religion. Although I enjoy much of it, I dislike and find no affinity with the passion for oval ball, misnomered, 'football' and the undue importance placed on sport in virtually every news broadcast, even when much more significant events for humanity are occurring.
I also find the Olympics disturbing. Whilst I can understand the athletes wanting to compete with others at the highest level and have no quarrel with them, I do abhor the displacement of ordinary people in the locations that the Olympics is held and the $billions spent on stadiums and other facilities, often left virtually unused afterwards and often built at heavy cost to the most disadvantaged residents who are unfortunate enough to live in event locations and who, inevitably, suffer even greater hardship and inconvenience in order that this prestigious carnival can make fortune and fame for other, generally already privileged and asset rich individuals and organisations.
However, I have perhaps strayed off the direct topic and onto my soapbox, so I will stop here.
As a footnote, I should mention that in m y '60s, I contacted my high school in an attempt to get the name of the sports master who victimised me. I could not remember it; probably because my mind, for self preservation purposes, had hidden it. I simply wanted to contact this man and aks if he understood what harm his behaviour had caused to me and probably others and whether he now had realised this and regretted it.
The school denied my request and reported it to the police, claiming that I was attempting to cause trouble.
It seems that little has changed, at least where I came from in England.
