Agnes by Tony Cochran for January 30, 2013

My sarcastic grade school gym teachers probably did more to forever ruin my self esteem than anybody besides my bitter old Russian martinet ballet teacher.

Go get ’em, Agnes.

Ah, Phys Ed! Separated those of us who were coordinated from those who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Self esteem was an invention of a later period.

I never had to climb a rope and still got poor grades in gym. I only passed because the teacher took pity on me.

Wow! A new change of clothes for Agnes.

I enjoyed running around and attempting sports, but was terrible at PE. And I dreaded when we had to climb The Rope.

I now realize one thing I hated about gym: If you did badly in other courses, none of your classmates had to know.

I was really good at low altitude rope hanging in school. Poor upper body strength never got me very far up the rope….

Agnes actually has a somewhat legitimate point this time around. I’m now in my 40s, and during the course of my life I’ve needed to climb a rope about, let me think here… zero times (give or take). But who knows – everything is getting smaller as time goes by, so perhaps in the future stairs will be replaced by ropes and poles. Definitely a more efficient use of space!

Rshive…..I’m probably older than you.Self esteem has been around since long before modern schools started treating it as an awardable commodity.Apparently you never never realised how hard some people work to achieve it because you were born with an overabundance.

Good Morse code guys beat texters

Love the sneakers.

I feel jealous. -We never had a rope to climb (and not because I broke it either).Getting picked last for any teams was a vote showing what my fellow athletes thought of my talent. At least it kept the kid with the broken arm from being last, so I count that a plus.