My Bittersweet P.E. Memories

For as far as I can remember, P.E. or Physical Education has been a part of my school subject ever since I was in kindergarten under the subject of M.A.P.E.H (Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health). In fact, I have even have P.E class included on my minor subjects during college for 2 semesters. I believed they made it so that students would have some time to exercise their bodies and have a moment relax their minds after studying. For most of the part, I really like the subject because I was exposed on multitude of sports by my dad when I was young and it is a subject that emphasized more on ensuring the physical health rather than a student's intellect. As long as you participate on the physical activities, there is almost no way that a person would fail the subject. However, there were times that I embarrassed participating on P.E. class and telling both my funny and embarrassing moments will be the topic of this post.

First, the Sweet Part

P.E. does not only includes simple exercises but also exposes students on different indoor and outdoor sports. This activities does not only provide students to keep their bodies in good health but also bring a sense of competition for them. I remember my P.E teacher during my third year in high school that organize a volleyball tournament for our class. At first, many of the students were unenthusiastic since volleyball was not a popular sports in my country and many does not have experience playing it but then, our teacher said that he would treat the winners with ice cream 🍦 and doughnuts 🍩 and suddenly, everyone got motivated. I guess, that is more than enough to bribe my classmates to participate in the game 😂. There are a total of 40 students in class which were divided into 6 teams so four of the teams have 7 members while the other two have only 6 members. We are one of the team that only gets 6 members with a perfect balance of 3 boys and girls and that was fine for me because I have prior experience to the game, being able to play when I was 10-11 years old so I know most of the rules and the basics of the game which I was able to teach to my other members for the next 3 weeks before the schedule of the tournament while our teacher needs to divide his attention on the other groups. Finally comes the day of the tournament and to make it short, our team won though I would say that it was a bit underhanded of me. Most of the students only know to make an underhand serve which is understandable with only 3 months of training but unlike them, not only I can do underhand serves, I can also do spike serves which almost no one can return and the girls are dodging the ball out of fear and that gives us an easy points. So that is how we got the sweet treat.

On the Bitter Part

When we became third years the focus of our P.E. subjects goes from outdoor sports from aerobics and gymnastics which are more of an indoor activity as both mostly uses ones body to exercise so it would not occur to me that I would hate the subject. The first thing that we do was nothing more than basic warm- ups but suddenly our P.E. teacher has decided that we should perform a cheerleading dance for our group activity as we proceed with gymnastics maybe because we cannot really perform the stuff actual gymnast do and chooses to have and alternative for it. The class was divided into 4 groups so on one has the handicap in numbers this time but as we practice our steps, it turns out that I don't have the talent for dancing. Most of the times, either I am too slow to follow the rest of the group or my movements were robotic. If I were to guess, it might be because the music played for the dance was a remix of hip-hop and RNB songs while I only listen to EMO and Metal songs causing the disconnect with my rhythm (or maybe I'm just making excuse 😂). There are often times that I almost trip myself and during the actual performance, it was a disaster for me. Dancing to the beat of a fast phased song clearly shows that I was not meant for dancing with my robotic movements which causes my classmates to laugh along the duration of the dance. That was really embarrassing and leaves me with bitter memories. Same thing happened during my first year in college so I guess I just don't have the talent for it.

P.E. is a subject that teaches different ways of teaching people how to maintain their physical health in check. That said, like other subjects, there will be things that a person was good and things that they don't and I have learned that lesson in the hard way. Despite that, the knowledge and principles that I have gain through the years have allowed me to be conscious of my body and though I might not able to participate in sports anymore, I was still able to work with my physicals health by going to the gym and I think that was because of the core values that P.E. have imbued in me throughout the years.

Thank you for reading my post and see you at the next one!