Shock! Horror! Surprise!
In much the same way as other B3tans, I was a bookish sort at school, given to academic pursuits over physicality. The resulting report card at the end of the year held, therefore, a nice, neat row of swotty As, sullied by the ridiculous inclusion of PE on the list. These two niggling letters were accompanied by a third, often a C. I was unconcerned by the mark itself, but being the type who ensured all things atop the desk were aligned to the same angle and knotted my tie to the perfect length and shape, the lack of symmetry irked me.

I took the marks I was given on these reports as an indictment of the scoring system and its wild inaccuracies. The letter grade stood for the effort the teachers perceived emanating from a student and ran from A to F. Each letter was paired with a number ranging from one to ten, designating the pupil's status in the hierarchy of learning. These were generally nines and tens, save the subject that is the very substance of this QOTW: a six, perhaps, in a good year. Oddly, these attainment scores bothered me not in the least; they weren't nearly as pleasing as the shiny grade at the far left. Those subjects I found easy and in which I excelled, therefore, garnered an A, despite my complete lack of effort. PE, where (for some reason) I had to try to attain some form of goal but for which I had no real aptitude, gathered only low grades.

As I matured and passed through my schooling, the lack of straight As ceased to infuriate me. I developed a perverse pride in my lack of athletic ambition, cultivating that lower grade by putting in less and less effort until the summer months, whereupon we were able to play cricket, tennis or rounders rather than football or rugby. Both of these latter sports were foreign to me, as all PE teachers assumed I was born with foreknowledge of the rules like other male children. All of the above is probably common ground to many geekatypes; I shall now diverge from the norm in that all of my PE teachers were generally quite pleasant. Nearing the end of compulsory education, they became downright pleasant and once let me choose the activity for the day because I was the only person being quiet and sitting still. Even picking cricket over football in opposition to the shouts of the other pupils failed to incur their ire and a jolly time was had by all.

At the end of that year came the shock, horror and surprise of the title. I glanced over my school report and found, to my horror, an A in every subject... including PE. Did this mean I had to give up my status as an unpopular, outcast child? Was my prized intelligence now a hindrance to my new and physical existence? Well, no. I'd just discovered I preferred solo sports (stop sniggering at the back) and had more of a chance to do them that year. What fun.

Apologies for lack of anything resembling amusement and the waste of several valuable seconds of your time. On the other hand, there are no puns in the above text.
(ThomsonsPier consumes, Mon 23 Nov 2009, 14:53, 1 reply)

C-

( Larry Vest One day at a time, sweet Jesus, FFS., Mon 23 Nov 2009, 15:17, closed)