Oh, the hockey-cocky...
Here's a quick bit of PE anthropology: those who're good at team sport quickly become the "in" crowd within any group of teenagers; the slightly more academic, unsporty, individualistic, and unpopular people end up in a sort of hinterland. From that hinterland, a defiant, "anti-in-crowd" can emerge. And that crowd actually can have a lot of fun.

After having endured two years of compulsory rugby, we were finally given the opportunity to switch to hockey as we entered the third year. I hate team sports, but hockey was a less bad option. The choice was easy for me, as it was for everyone else who hated team sports. Yet there were also members of the sporty "in-crowd" who also chose hockey. So it was that the year divided into three rough groups: the rugby crowd - all of whom took their game seriously - and two hockey crowds - one of which was drawn from people who took it seriously, and the other of which... um... wasn't. I belonged to this last crowd.

Very quickly, the divide between the two hockey crowds opened and became a chasm. The sporty group would merrily run around doing things that sporty people do, calling each other "mate", and engaging in that sort of blokey bonhomie so despised by people with a fully-functioning brain.

We, on the other hand, realised that we were holding sticks. Weapons. When the games were, in effect, played between the hockey team and the others, the injury rate rocketed. It's easy to break a bone in someone's hand without it looking deliberate.

When the teachers realised that the nerds were treating games lessons as a thinly-disguised excuse to purge teenage resentment of the popular by maiming them, they tried to ensure that the teams were more of a mix of the popular and unpopular.

Did I mention that there was quite an active strain of Marxism among the unpopular kids at my school? I didn't? There was. So when the popular kids who'd appointed themselves team captains and star players tried to chivvy us into showing obeisance to them and their pitiful pastime, we just sat down and started singing the Internationale and the Soviet national anthem. Yup: we went on strike - well, lolstrike - from PE.

I never liked hockey, but I grew to be tolerably keen on hockey lessons.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 23 Nov 2009, 12:33, 4 replies)

Top NeedlessToSayIHadTheLastLaughing here.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Mon 23 Nov 2009, 12:36, closed)

Meh.
It wasn't so much that we were trying to get people back for anything: more along the lines that we were just irritating teenage tosspots.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 23 Nov 2009, 13:00, closed)

In Soviet Russia
hockey plays YOU!!!
( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Mon 23 Nov 2009, 16:16, closed)

I think your second to last paragraph sums up...
...why the bookish sort of kids got picked on so regularly.

Edit: oh and your reply explains why! I should read all the replies before posting I suppose.
(The Boy Monders I have ginger bits in my beard., Mon 23 Nov 2009, 16:51, closed)