"What Is Your Childhood Trauma?!"

For me, it's gym class.

Are there many people in this world who have fond memories of gym class?

(I suspect, if there are, these people are soulless sociopaths...in other words, they are part of what made gym so goddamned awful for me.)

Anyway. My memories of gym class (P.E., actually) are not fond. They are, in fact, more on the traumatic side. During my elementary school years, I had a solid grounding in all sorts of indignities, starting with the federally-mandated physical fitness tests at the beginning of the school year (remember the excruciating humiliation of dangling on the bars, not being able to do a single chin-up, your classmates mockingly cheering you on? How about the torture of the mile run?) all the way to Field Day at the end of the year--a whole day outside, stuck in the humid heat of late spring in Florida, doing three-legged-races and tugs-of-war and sack races and water-balloon tosses. In between, there was everything from t-ball to badminton to tennis to dodgeball to duck-duck-goosee to oh my god make it stop--kickball. Anyone else remember the hollow thunk-thunk-thunk of the ball as it bumped and rolled along the sandy ground, dreading the moment when you had to haul your foot back and kick?

(There was, to the best of my knowledge, only once in elementary school that I ever got an A in gym class. I have no idea what I did differently. I just know that no matter how I tried, I only ever got Bs.)

In middle school,  however, I only ever got As, because I always, always "dressed out" into my gym uniform, and that was the surefire way to excel. But there were still so many other awful obstacles--handball and dodgeball and softball and volleyball, along with the trashiest, bitchiest bully-girls you ever did see. High school, I only had to deal with two gym classes, early on, and I got that shit done with freshman year. After that, I was home-free.

Except...

Except.

For the next 15 years of my life, I managed to skate by on youth and time being on my side. I was able to be a lump, more or less, and not feel the affects of said lumpage. But now that I'm 34, it's time to face up to some facts: I'm about 35 pounds overweight, I've got me some high cholesterol and blood sugar, I love fried food, and I'm at the point when I have to start making some lifestyle changes if I want to avoid premature dying to death.

Also, I don't want to have to buy any more newer, bigger clothes.

So, once more, it's time to try to set aside my deep, deep, deep aversion no, let's be honest, fear of exercising in front of groups of Beautiful People, and get my ass to a gym. I signed up for one today--the third one in four years. Will it work this time? Will I work this time?

I don't know. The one thing I do know--the second someone shows up with a kickball, I'm outta there.