A rerun of Frasier with breakfast is a particularly cracking way to start the day. But this morning's episode, where Frasier dates a PE teacher and gets flashbacks of being useless at gym at school, had me choking on my cereal...
It was 1981, I was 13 and I too was flailing around at the bottom of a gym rope. I can still hear my peers giggling behind my back...
Me: It's no use, Miss P, I just can't do it!
Gym teacher: Nonsense, you simply aren't trying! Try harder. Right, nobody goes to lunch till she climbs that rope.
Other girls (no longer giggling) : Awwwwww Miiisssssss!
15 eternal mins later, and at least 2 inches off the floor...
Gym teacher: Useless, utterly useless. Right off you go, the lot of you.
Oh yes, those were the days. If the big green industrial-strength gym pants didn't give you a complex, a spot of public humiliation would certainly 'build character' and do wonders for your popularity.
Looking back, it probably was quite funny to watch my puffy red face and big green arse swinging perilously like a shabby Christmas tree bauble, but to this day I maintain that gyms remain the habitat of sadists who have forgotten we are supposed to have evolved.
I mean, what would Mr Darwin have said if he'd been ordered to climb a rope, let alone in unflattering green pants...
'What the **** for? One can buy perfectly good fruit at the shops!'
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