Middle School Gym Almost Made Me Gay

When I Was 11, Billy Blanks had the best boobs that I had ever seen.

For those of you who are unaware, or had normal childhoods, Billy Blanks is the black dude who dances around in a teal leotard center stage in the "Tae Bo" exercise videos.

My middle school was poorly funded and had an athletic department crippled by apathy. The two gym teachers at my middle school, a balding man with a receding hairline and a militant lesbian, would put on the same Tae Bo exercise video nearly every single day. They would roll out televisions and play the grainy, bootlegged VHS tapes for us to follow while they would sit in the back of the gym playing Truth or Dare or whatever adults did in the 90s.

This particular Tae Bo video, which has been irreversibly etched into my subconscious, stars one Billy Blanks dressed in a very low cut spandex jumpsuit. He would introduce himself, the crowd of track suit wearing 20-somethings behind him would cheer, and he would begin leading everyone in a warm-up routine.

Everything would be fine until shoulder rolls.

Billy Blanks would shout out "Shoulder Rolls" and begin to heave his shoulders about. When his shoulders would come forward, they would mash his oversized pectorals together creating cleavage peaking out over his deep v-neck the likes of which my young eyes had never experienced.

LOOKIT DEM TITTIES

I didn't know what to think. I was pretty sure that I liked girls, but this middle-aged black man was looking at me encouragingly while mashing his chest into the best set of C-cups that I had ever seen. Better than a middle school girl's at least.

This is already a time of horrible confusion and frustration for a child. Why would a school subject a room full of 11 year old children to this kind of material? The boys all immediately have sneaking suspicions that they're gay and all of the girls begin a lifetime of battling with thoughts of inadequacy.

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On the occasional days when we wouldn’t have Tae Bo forced upon us, there was another reason to hate gym class. On these days, the gym teachers themselves would directly lead us in exercises.

These warm-ups consisted of a seemingly random hodgepodge of various activities. However, there was always one commonality throughout every single permutation. Pushups would always directly precede jumping-jacks.

For those who have been an 11 year old boy or for people who have known 11 year old boys, it is common knowledge that this is a time of constant struggle with an unfortunate phenomenon. This phenomenon is the acquisition of a tiny little soldier standing at full attention with little to no provocation. Laying face down on the ground, hugging a tree, opening a letter, riding in the backseat of a van down a bumpy road, getting a phone call, finishing a crossword puzzle: all of these can be the culprit of an uprising south of the equator. These miniature teepees are never welcome. Every moment after you begin to fly the flag at full mast is spent praying that it will quickly go away before you're required to stand up.

(Short aside: there are some fabrics that make it easier to veil the disturbance. Corduroy and Denim do a fairly good job. Unfortunately for me, my middle school required that we wear a gym uniform whose shorts had the thickness of aged papyrus. There weren't even pleats that I could blame it on.)

So imagine a classroom full of boys doing pushups and laying on their stomachs in between sets. That quickly becomes a classroom full of boys laying uncomfortably on their stomachs each with a painful secret. I used to think that if I strangled it by crushing it ruthlessly against the ground maybe I could kill it and it would never come back again and I could finally do pushups in peace.

After 3 sets of pushups, we would be told that we'd have to do jumping jacks.

The face of every guy in the class would immediately become ashen and would twitch with nervousness. The girls would have already started and done half a dozen while some of us were still getting slowly and unwillingly to our feet. Most of the time, we couldn't scare our turtles back into their shells fast enough and what resulted is what I'm sure looked like a hundred little minnows flopping around on the deck of a fishing vessel.

I’m glad I’ve managed to repress most of these memories. I don’t think there’s a single person on the face of this planet that can recall middle school with fondness.

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What I’m trying to say is that we should invent a machine that lets us skip ages 11-17. The world would be a lot happier. Acne medication sales would plummet, though.