The Obstacle Course

Like most human beings I sometimes find myself cruising down memory lane. Sometimes memories of my youth come to me at breakneck speed. This is one of those memories. A memory that is so much part of me but one that I would love to forget with a sharp blow to the back of the head. This was perhaps one of the most embarrassing events in my life as a teenager in high school. It was so embarrassing that at the moment that the event was unfolding I remember wishing that the Principal would get on the P.A. system and announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, nothing of what you are witnessing now will matter in about 15 minutes because the missiles are in the air! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

This catastrophic event took root early one morning as I was preparing to go to school. I was lacing up my very old Pro-Keds when the laces on my left sneaker snapped in my hands. “No problem”, I thought to myself. All I had to do was get the spare laces, re-lace my sneaker and be merrily on my way. It is at this point dear reader that I believe Satan himself saw a perfect opportunity to relieve himself of his mundane, daily chore of torturing souls and have a chuckle or two at my expense. He saw the opportunity and he took it!

I remember feeling quite confident as I pulled out the ‘junk drawer’ in the kitchen that I would find the sought after laces. I also recall my heart momentarily stopping when I realized that the laces were not there. Panic began to rise within me and I needed a quick solution to calm me down. The only thing that I could think of was to remove the lace, size it up to be even and proceeded to thread it through the sneaker holes. It turned out that the lace reached about the third set of holes on the sneaker. This provided for the quick solution I was searching for but it also gave me a very loose sneaker that kept ‘farting’ as I walked. I decided to put up with the annoyance until the end of the day. After school I would get new laces from the store and that would be the end of my dilemma.

In school all was going well, except for the few who kept looking at me in disgust as I ‘fart-walked’ past them in the hall. I had two more periods remaining and I would then be on my way home. The two periods remaining were gym and science. It was in gym class where all hell broke loose and my day of infamy began.

I had completely forgotten that my gym teacher had instructed us the day before that we were to go through a physical test today. Let me first enlighten the reader as to the character of my gym teacher. He was the devil incarnate! It was a popular belief among my fellow classmates that he was discharged from his duty in Vietnam because he was much too cruel to the enemy. This gym teacher had a fervor about gym class that evoked both admiration and bowel movements from the students. He was a rather short man compared to the Chrysler building. His voice would evoke many different feelings from the students but, almost always, tears would accompany these feelings. It is not so much the fear factor that he caused, believe me he was feared, but his breath would give off a distinct odor of onions or garlic. Yet who amongst us was brave enough to inform this behemoth that his breath was in fact burning our nose hairs at their very roots! In any case, he was a rather large entity for such a small framed high-school boy to behold and this just lent to the dread of the upcoming task ahead of me.

Now I must describe the obstacle course that was to be our physical test for the day. I personally believe that my gym teacher, ‘Sergeant Death’, specifically designed this abomination in order to weed out and kill all non-athletes, such as myself. There were seven obstacles or tasks to perform while being timed. The seven were just two short of the nine circles of Hell that Dante had to go through on his journey. A journey that seemed somewhat more appealing than the task expected of us.

The obstacle course was set up as such: there was first a metal beam that was held approximately two and a half feet above a gym mat by supports. The second obstacle was a three-foot high metal hurdle. The third was the gymnast’s ‘horse’ followed by the fourth obstacle, ‘the elephant’ (placing gym mats over the parallel bars that were used in gymnastics class created this monstrosity). The fifth obstacle was a row of six or seven crates that had been cut in half and tied together to make a ‘tunnel of doom’ that sat atop a series of gym mats. The sixth obstacle was two rows of four tires that one had to run through. The last thing to be performed was not an obstacle but rather a task. The task was to do two somersaults.

The objective of this testosterone-laden test was to make it through alive and in as short amount of time as possible. The gym teacher chose one of the ‘jocks’ to show the class how to go about surviving the course. This ‘jock’ was what, I believe, every male student in that gym class pretended to see when they were alone, in their rooms, looking into a full length mirror. His jet-black hair lay perfectly over the orange-sized shoulder muscles that protruded from his tank top shirt. His chest looked as if Raphael himself had sculpted it. His biceps were as large as a regulation sized softball and his leg muscles looked very well toned. This was probably due to the fact that he continually ran after the ‘nerds’ in school to impress the young ladies with how good he was at giving ‘Atomic Wedgies.’ He showed us how to take the test by following his example. When the whistle blew he ran towards the first obstacle and he carefully rolled under the metal beam. He got up running, cleared the hurdle with little effort and picked up speed. He placed one hand on the ‘horse’, jumped over it and veered to the right (one needed to veer to the right otherwise they would crash into the gymnasium wall). He then ran right at the ‘elephant’ and cleared it by jumping onto and sliding off it at the other side. Completing that task he slid through the tunnel of crates and took the tires without breaking a sweat. He did his two somersaults and even finished off with an arrogant bow to the rest of the gym class as if to say, “Try and top that you little freaks!”

I recall watching wide-eyed as this ‘jock’ made it all seem easy. I also recall the enormous amount of sweat that began to form on my forehead when the gym teacher announced that the test would be given in alphabetical order. “Athanaslacker! Get up here now!” bellowed the gym teacher.

I stepped to the starting line shaking all over. I could feel all those eyes looking straight at me. “Why must they all look at me?!?!” I questioned within my mind. It then occurred to me that they were particularly attracted to my sneaker and the noise that it made. “Are you ready Athanatuckus?” screamed the demon with the whistle. “Go!” he ordered and pushed down on his stopwatch.

I began running and the left sneaker started to get looser with every step I took. I tried to curl my toes to hold onto it before it flew off. I guess I was paying too close attention to my sneaker and didn’t realize that the metal beam was coming up soon. When I did realize that I was coming up on the obstacle I panicked and threw myself onto the mat. I remind you that one was supposed to gingerly roll under the beam… I bounced! I bounced off the mat and when I came up my leg hit the metal beam causing it to fly off its supports. It came down on my left shoulder and my left cheek as I got up to run towards the hurdle.

Pausing momentarily to make sure that all my teeth were intact caused Beelzebub to shout, “Move Athanapansy move!” I picked up speed but lost my sneaker just steps away from the hurdle. Well, when that socked foot came down on the waxed gym floor I sort of glided towards the hurdle. I tried to make a last ditch effort to catapult myself over. My upper torso made it over but my right foot got caught in mid-air by the surprisingly steadfast hurdle. A grimace of pain spread across my lips but I continued to limp towards the ‘horse’. “Hurry Athanawussy! You’re going too slow!” yelled the Angel of Death. So I hurried to meet my death. At this point I was willing to embrace it!

I picked up speed and headed for the ‘horse’. I placed my hand on it and hurled myself over while totally misjudging the height of this worthy opponent. As I went up in the air my right knee crashed into the ‘horse’. I managed to clear it without falling only because I was stopped from doing so by gently smacking into the gym wall (I forgot to turn to the right!) Luckily I hit the wall with my back which allowed me to see the full view of my fellow classmates looking on in sheer amazement at my grace and elegance. “Athanasorryass you’d better keep moving!” So I did. I was determined to clear the next obstacle. I had to come out of this with some sense of accomplishment.

The ‘elephant’ seemed to grow much larger as I ran towards it but, as I stated already, I was determined to clear it! I ran with all my might and just steps away from it I closed my eyes, leapt in the air and prayed. I was flying through the air and suddenly felt the rush of breath escape me from excitement. OK it wasn’t excitement! I lost my breath because my flight was cut short by the impact that my midsection made with the ‘elephant’. I found myself folded in half, clinging onto the gym mat atop the parallel bars and wondering why the horizon over the gym mat was disappearing. I was falling! The mat that I clung onto for dear life was sliding off the bars. I fell to the floor with the gym mat falling on top of me. “Athanastinkus you’re ruining my obstacle course! Get up and move it!” cried the Prince of Darkness. I didn’t want to but I did anyway.

I went under the ‘elephant’ and ran towards the crates. I put my full effort into it and slid all the way through the ‘tunnel of doom’ without getting snagged on anything. The tunnel didn’t collapse on me, I didn’t break a rib sliding and almost made it out of there without any incident. Of course one must realize that sliding across a gym mat is the equivalent of sliding on a carpet! Rug burn! I would have gotten away without letting the whole class know what I was experiencing if it wasn’t for the blood-curling scream that escaped my throat. Even Coach Lucifer was concerned at this point. “Athanasapiss! Did that ear ringing scream come out of your mouth? Keep going! Only two more obstacles!”

I saw the set of tires and thought to myself, “Just do the damn things as quickly as possible and let’s put this nightmare to rest.” I ran to the tires and proceeded to run my feet through them. Up, down, up, down went my little ole feet. Yet one of my little feet should have come down when it went up and I ended up face first in the next tire. The strong smell of rubber caused me to dream of how nice it would have been, at that point, to have my head under a tire that was attached to an automobile of any size. “Athanacrap get your face out of my tire and go! Two somersaults and you’re done!”

I raised my now blackened face and jogged towards the middle of the gym. I got down to do the first of the two somersaults when I heard a sickening SNAP! Even the sadistic instructor who stood above me decided not to allow me to attempt a second somersault. “Athanawaste, when you’re ready to see how it’s supposed to be done take a seat with the others.”

As I lay there I swore two things. For one, I could swear that I heard the entire gym class start up a low but audible chant of “geek boy”. My mind compensated for this by convincing my ears to believe that the chant was actually “Greek boy, Greek boy!” They must have been an anti-Hellenic crowd. The other thing I swore was that I would never again suffer such an indignity! I swore that day that I would change for the better.

Decades later I pull into the parking lot of the high school where I teach Social Studies. I turn the ignition off and bash my head on the car door frame as I try to exit the car. I walk towards the entrance and twist my ankle on the gravel spread across the yard. After moments of rubbing and cursing I grab my briefcase and climb the staircase. Up, down, up down go my little ole feet and, once again, they fail to come up in time. Crashing into the next step I wonder if I’ll make it into the building alive. Gathering my papers from the stairs and shoving them into the now broken briefcase I get into the building and attempt the double swinging doors. I kick the door open and am almost successful in getting through when a student’s voice says, “Good morning Mr. A!” I turn to greet the voice when I notice the sudden change of expression on their innocent face that something terrible is about to happen. I turn in time to get the full frontal assault of the door on its back swing. Rubbing my nose and brushing away tears I run to the sanctuary of my office. Turning the key I hear a sickening SNAP! A colleague ran out of her office and asks, “Athanasakis, are you alright? You don’t look so good.”