I loved PE
I don't know about you Brits, I've heard stories of your "public" school buggery and all that, but here in the states, the PE teachers leave the inappropriate sexual contact to the priests and generally just make you run round for an hour doing whatever sports haven't been banned by the state as being too violent or dangerous or too prone to hurt kid's feelings, except for my middle school PE teacher.

Mr. Patty was, at the time, terrifying, although looking back the things he did were pretty hilarious. He was about 7 feet tall and fresh off the boat from "Trinabago," which is what he called Trinidad and Tobago, because "dey mey be two islands, but dey are one country!" He looked just like Issac Hayes in Escape from New York.

Mr. Patty ran his PE class like a drill instructor. You even had to tuck your T-shirt into your athletic shorts Any infractions, no matter how minor were punished by "de pooshups," 20 at a time. If you complained, he would go on a tirade about how easy us kids have it: "You don know what it's like in Trinabago boy. Dey have you in de cane fields choppin a machete 12 hours a day. You tink de pooshups are hard? I send you to Trinabago and you see what's really hard."

His favorite thing to make us do was play a game he invented called Smittyball, which was a lot like kickball, except you played it indoors on a basketball court, and you used a basketball instead of a soft rubber playground ball. The only way to tag someone out in Smittyball was to hit them with the ball. Headshots were encouraged.

But the highlight of my PE experience didn't even come in PE class. It was at a school dance, when Mr. Patty had the misfortune of having to be a chaperone. To get himself through this harrowing experience, Mr. Patty showed up blind stinking drunk, probably off of some sort of high proof sugar cane moonshine that he cut down and distilled himself. He was pretty jovial at first, dancing with the kids and having a good time, but his good time soon turned sour. When a parent complained to him that they didn't think a chaperone should be intoxicated at a middle school dance, Mr. Patty wound up and socked the parent right in the jaw with a haymaker straight from the islands. The resulting brawl lasted the better part of 15 minutes until the police arrived and broke it up. Mr. Patty was suspended and had to issue a public apology. The parent went to the hospital. nobody complained about "de pooshups" after that.
(raulduke, Sun 22 Nov 2009, 16:03, 4 replies)

Are all Americans...........
slightly racist?
( SteveFrench Cardio is for homo's. do you even lift bro?, Sun 22 Nov 2009, 16:13, closed)

How is it racist?
It's a good story...
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Sun 22 Nov 2009, 17:01, closed)

Nah
They are not all racist - this certainly wasn't racist.
I think fighting with a parent, being drunk at a school dance police being called and the guy kept his job, proves this isn't racist.
If of course he was black.....
If the teacher was a white dude from T&T, made all the black kids tuck in their PE kit, making only black kids do the press ups, cited the story that it was hard in the sugar canes as he used to make his plantation workers work 12 hours a day with no water and a machette and smacked a black parent for being black, and then kept his job, Then I guess it might be.... But I dont quite see that from this story.
(wobbler, Sun 22 Nov 2009, 21:46, closed)

I'm not sure how you think it's racist...
Is it the phonetic spelling of how he talked? Part of what made him so great was his accent, I just wanted to convey that part of the story. It's interesting, I've been told I'm slightly racist before. (Now that I've moved to a more rural area, I've also been told I "talk like a nigger.") I grew up in a place where white people are minorities, so most of the people I grew up with were black. Obviously if I were black, nobody would be insinuating that I was saying anything racist. I guess what's normal between me and my friends sounds racist if you imagine it being said from a white person to a room full of other white people. I don't. Damn, this could be a QOTW in itself.
(raulduke, Mon 23 Nov 2009, 0:57, closed)