SO APPARENTLY IRELAND gets a D minus when it comes to physical education.
WE WONDER WHY.
P.E. is the worst thing ever, and here’s why.
1. The smell still haunts us to this day
Why does P.E. have such a distinct smell of feet? With the mention of it, a mixture of sweat and rubber hits your nostrils.
2. P.E. teachers show no mercy under their tyranny
P.E. teachers are chosen for their inability to feel empathy or emotion.
3. It was constantly freezing
Football, hockey, rounders, running in circles for no reason, all required the outdoors unless your school had a particularly snazzy hall.
Clearly the constant torrential rain and cutting wind was no deterrent. Those days we were CERTAIN P.E. would be cancelled just never came through for us. Sure you’ll warm up, they said.
4. “Everybody pick a partner”
Four words that would strike the fear in to any school-going child. But you have TWO best friends, what if they pick each other? What of you then?
Even to this day, we wake up in a sweat remembering that faithful day we were paired with the teacher.
5. The tracksuit
Usually school approved, usually designed to be bet on to you in all the wrong places and baggy everywhere else. And don’t forget to tie up your hair. TUT.
To make them look even uglier you had to cover them with a BIB that smelled like the collective BO of the entire post-pubescent male population of the school.
6. That one athletic kid that showed you up
Smug Siobhan is on the county’s minor camogie team and stays doing the bleep test until the home-time bell goes off. Cretin.
7. Being picked to get the equipment from equipment press
If you were lucky it only involved getting some bibs and a few balls.
But you never were. It was always moving benches and reefing out the gymnastics horse from behind a bunch of camogie sticks.
8. THE Bleep test
Traumatic and has no place in an education establishment. But do they adhere to these rules?
No. Many a teenager has sworn off exercise for life as a result of the shame-spiral that is the Bleep Test.
9. Your teacher would rather throw you off a cliff than excuse you from class
You really DO have a headache though. Forging your P.E. excuse letters got harder and harder as your lies grew more and more ‘unbelievable and you have a cold’ wasn’t cutting it any more.
10. Waiting to be picked for a team was more anxiety-inducing than the Leaving Cert
Picked last for dodge-ball? On the bright-side, at least you get to start afresh in a whole new school when you move cross-country.
11. It was rare you’d get to play something actually fun
Please be the tiny bean bags, please be the tiny bean bags.
Or, God forbid, THIS thing. You had no idea what its purpose was, but damn, it was fun.
Keep dreaming and get the GAA ball.
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