I took PE/Health sophomore year of high school. The class, and it technically was just one class, alternated, so we met in a classroom twice a week for Health and in the gym twice a week for PE and maybe Fridays switched so PE one week and Health the next Friday and so on. I don’t remember how the Fridays worked. And I remember almost nothing of the Health class. But I will never forget PE. Thanks to Coach Mills and the torn ligament in my back.
My high school was overcrowded. Insanely so. Like one of the top three most overcrowded in the state throughout the 1980s. That’s ratio of students to teachers, students per classroom, students per square foot. We topped all of the lists. So there was no way the school could waste a huge room like a gym on one class per hour.
My PE class met with two others — another regular PE like mine taught by Coach Mills (cheerleading), and an Advanced PE class taught by the men’s football coach who was also the head of the athletics department.
(The neato advantage to overcrowding was the school had to provide so many class options each term so enough students could get enough credit hours to graduate and out of the way of the next batch of students. Thus classes like Advanced PE which let you spend a little more time on each unit since you weren’t alternating with Health. I didn’t take Advanced PE, but I did take Shakespeare Studies, The Novel, Advanced English Literature, and four separate painting classes.)
My PE teacher was the women’s coach. I think she was primarily the (women’s) softball coach, but she also had the women’s golf team, women’s tennis team, and (women’s) powderpuff football team. And maybe women’s track team. My Creative Writing teacher coached women’s soccer.
The Advanced class was off in one corner of the gym doing whatever, while the two regular PEs usually merged into one super large class. The coaches had worked it out so they each taught the units (tennis, track, etc) they knew best. So my coach taught both classes just about everything. Coach Mills taught basic gymnastics and aerobics to both classes. Which sucked for my coach but was best for the students because Coach Mills was a truly terrible teacher. And a lousy coach according to the cheerleaders at that time.
All of that is a long introduction to the actual story at the heart of today’s post (and a really good example of how effed up my high school was).
Basic Gymnastics unit. Several of the girls who had done gymnastics almost their whole lives usually starting as toddlers said included some pretty advanced tumbling. For safety, Mills had us drag out all of the mats and lay them end to end in one ling continuous line the length of the gym. She’d pull out some unlucky cheerleader to demonstrate a move. Then the two classes, about 70 students, would line up and start rolling.
There was this one roll. I have no idea wha it’s called. It was like a somersault, but you start and end standing. So stand, tuck your chin in, hurl yourself forward so your shoulders hit the mat, roll, spring upright to standing. And again. And again. Mills signaled the second student to start as soon as the first student sprang up from their first roll.
The guy behind me was lanky. His forward hurl propelled him my farther than my forward hurls. So when he sprang upright waaaay too close to me, he waited an extra beat before starting. Mills yelled him. Mills yelled at me. Mills yelled and yelled and yelled.
I felt lanky boy’s foot brush my leg as he rolled and sprang. So I tucked and hurled. And lanky boy’s foot almost knocked my leg out from under me as I sprang up. So I tucked and hurled even faster.
Everyone said they heard the crack. .
Mills yelled at me to get up. I was sprawled with my legs across a mat and my shoulders and head on the hard gym. No one could tuck and hurl. Not that anyone was trying to. The students thought I’d broken my neck.
Mills yelled. My coach went for an ice pack. And the head coach took over. He sent Mills away. He had me wiggle fingers and toes, then move a specific fingers, then held my neck and shoulders while helping me roll onto my back on the mat.
I didn’t break my neck. This was before MRIs were common, maybe before the MRI was invented. So there was no definite diagnoses. Based on the location of the swelling and pain, and the negative x-rays I’d probably torn one or more of the tendons that connect the shoulder blade and spine.
Mills made a big deal about giving me an incomplete for that day since I hadn’t finished all of the tumbles. She begrudgingly had me write a report on gymnastics since, per doctor’s orders, I sat out the rest of the unit. She refused to give me any parameters for the report— history of gymnastics? or common tumbles? or how gymnasts train? and how long? how many sources? She then gave me a D on the report. Which brought my grade for the term down to a very low B, possibly a C. Or should have. I got an A and I assume that was the head coach’s intervention.
I’ve been thinking about that incident the last few days. One, because with the tense muscles and all lately I really feel that torn ligament (or ligaments).
But mostly because of retribution. Of incompetent people exacting their petty revenge.
It’s been almost two weeks since I said six and seven hours straight at the front desk, with only a 15 minute break if I could even get it, was too much for me now. Almost two weeks since I officially requested my front desk shift be broken into two or even three shorter stints with at least an hour back time in between. Almost two weeks since I had to let my bosses see my on the brink of a panic attack, and suddenly my mental health accommodation wasn’t impossible anymore.
And I’m waiting for the Incomplete, the D, the vindictiveness.
I think that’s part of the anxiety, the constant almost panic attack I’ve been in lately.
I don’t have an ending for this. Hopefully y’all saw the vulture cover pic and knew what you were getting into.
p.s. Coach Mills — that’s absolutely her real name beeteedubs — was still around two years later when I did the senior group hike in Red River Gorge. (Almost 900 seniors so we had a series of group outings that were free and within a 90 minute drive of Lexington.) I tried everything, including refusing to leave the bus, to not be on her team. She took us off trail and got lost and another team finally found us but by then we were on an odd ridge too steep to climb up or down with ropes, etc. And the rescuing team and a trail were below us and we finally got to a point that was less steep tho still very dangerous and the first couple of students from my team tried zigzagging down to the trail but it was raining and had been raining for days so it was all just loose mud and someone slipped and slid down and was caught just before they went over the lip of a ridge by the other team and that’s how we all had to get to the trail one at a time sliding down a muddy slope and grabbed just before certain death. Worst game of Red Rover ever.
And even that didn’t get Mills fired. I was never one of those kids who visited her old school so I don’t know what she did after I graduated. I have remembered her name all of these years just so I can curse her with my last dying breath. She’ll probably die before me (is she already dead?), but that’s okay because I plan to curse her so vehemently it will follow her to h*ll which is clearly where she’s headed.
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