On Friday afternoon, needing a junk food/caffeine rush of some kind to get me through the last few loooong hours of work, I walked across the street and bought a Diet Coke and some Doritos. And as I walked back with these two items in my hand, I was for some reason reminded – out of the blue – of my Grade 8 gym teacher.
I am, as you are likely aware, not in the greatest shape. Sure, I'm not 288 pounds like I was in my Alberta heyday (I'm a svelte 227 now for those scoring at home), but I'm not about to go run a marathon either. Or wear anything slim-fitting, for that matter.
But during the early days of high school – before what I'll call the Pizza Hut Era – I wasn't yet The Fat Kid. I was just a regular-sized guy. And my Grade 8 gym teacher was Mr. Bergen. He was a gruff no-nonsense guy, but he always got along well with the jocks – pretty standard for all gym teachers everywhere, I'd guess. He was likable enough, as far as most were concerned. But I never really liked him. To be honest, I thought he was a bit of a pompous dick.
So that's probably why I never paid much attention to anything he said, and it's also the likely reason I quit the Grade 8 basketball team halfway through the year. But more on that in a bit.
One thing – possibly the only thing – I ever remember Mr. Bergen telling us in class came during a little speech he gave about the importance of being in shape and all that stuff. His point was that a healthy, active lifestyle was actually pretty easy to keep up. (His ulterior motive was to get us to sign up for the basketball team. He was the coach.)
"It's easy to stay fit, but it's all about choices," he told us. "When you go home from school today, for example, you can do two things. One, you can grab a basketball and go get some exercise in the driveway or at the school. Or two, you can go sit in front of the TV and watch cartoons with chips and a Coke."
Obviously, I eventually chose to align myself with the chips and Coke option. But it may surprise you to know that this wasn't my first choice.
My first choice was to actually get some exercise. So I signed up to play basketball. Which wasn't really a stretch for me – I knew how to play, had a modicum of athletic ability, and I loved sports, so why not?
But aside from the 7 a.m. practices before school, the other thing that dissuaded me from the game – and made the chips and cartoon option look pretty sweet – was what I quickly noticed about the rest of my new 13-year-old teammates.
They were all douchebags.
Of course, at the time, I probably didn't think of them as "douchebags" but I know that I didn't like their attitudes one bit. They were mostly from James Kennedy Elementary – which was the elementary school hoops powerhouse, if there was such a thing – and I just thought they were, much like the coach, pompous dicks.
(Turns out my suspicions were correct – by Grade 12 they had all turned into your typical douchey jocks. You know, the kind of guys who all shave their heads to look the same, and say "Bro" a lot. So in retrospect, I'm glad I recognized it early and got out when I did.)
I was a mediocre player on the team. I played a few minutes off the bench, don't remember scoring much if at all (the latter fact also describes my early 20s) but I do recall being a pretty good rebounder, which was shocking for a kid who was barely five-feet tall. But basketball interfered with my weekend hockey schedule, and because hockey was more important and less douche-infested, I quit the basketball team after about a month.
And that was really the beginning of the end for me, fitness-wise. I suffered through two years of miserable gym classes, where the pompous teachers spent most of class-time trying to act cool around the jocks while not really giving a shit about the regular kids, while the token one-year-older-because-he's-a-retard-and-failed-gym bully spent his time making life hell for the younger kids.
By Grade 10, my knees and head (concussion) were pretty sore from hockey, so I got a doctor's note to exclude me from my last year of mandatory high school gym. Sure, I probably milked it, I could've toughed it out, but by then I'd just had enough of all that high school gym class entailed – the asshole teachers, bullies, dumb jocks, etc...
And thus began my long, loving relationship with the Coca-Cola company.
Now, I'm not blaming douchey high-school basketball kids for putting me off the road to fitness and down Dorito Boulevard. I've become what I've become because of my own choices, and to be honest, I don't necessarily regret it. I'd rather be fat than an asshole.
Just makes me wonder what might've been, is all, had I stuck with the whole basketball thing.
Maybe I could've played pro. Or at least been a gym teacher.
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