Friday, April 24, 2009

Stuyvesant High School Phys. Ed


In their famous "Fight for Your Right to Party" video, AdRock, of the Beastie Boys, is sporting a Stuyvesant High School Phys. Ed T-shirt. This comes into play, because my story is about the very same Stuyvesant High School gym class.
A friend just sent me a note on Facebook about her favorite story from our freshman year in 1990. So there we were in Gym class, wearing our stupid gym gear, doing the Presidential Physical Fitness tests that Reagan forced on all the public schools back in the 80's when the government decided all our American kids were turning into useless blobs, Remember those lame commercials of the kid standing in front of a video game that starts flashing about the program, the kid does a few crappy push-ups and then proclaims, "I'm a winner!" ? The best part is the old fossil of a coach that's supposed to inspire kids. Are you fucking kidding me?
Well, anyway, we were in the sit ups section of that, where it's dead silent in the gym while the teacher times 150 kids as their partner holds down their ankles, and they do as many sit-ups as they can in a minute. It's like 9:30 in the morning and my cheerios are still settling in, and now, I've gotta do as many abdominal crunches as I possibly can... I'm sure you can guess what comes next- I rip the grand master of all farts, reverberating off the white tile walls, and dampened only slightly by the horrified bodies of the other 150 or so 14 year olds in the gym with me. So I look at the scruntched up face of this poor kid, god, I have no idea who it even was, who has his head, literally, less than a foot away from my ass, and even though I know it means fessing up, my status as a gentleman prevents me from letting it slide, and I just look at the poor guy, laugh, and say, "Sorry..." so at this point, the whole gym breaks down in hysterics, I think even the gym teacher was crying she was laughing so hard, and nobody can continue, and we've gotta do the whole fucking thing all over again. Carla Melman, who prompted me to share this brief tale, loves to tell this story at every single reunion. And she always points out, if I'd just kept my damn fool mouth shut, nobody would've known it was me. But that's not the point, I tell her, I'm a man of honor. Clearly.