HUMILIATION REQUIRED

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Hi there. Boy have I missed you guys! Work devoured January. Hopefully it will use February to digest. But it's not looking that way so far.

It's my favorite time of day. I'm wearing my matrioshka doll PJs and in bed with the laptop. Don is watching Jason Bourne beat up some Tunisian fella - one of them is going to need a chiropractor, I can tell you that much. The dogs are curled up in bed like little fuzzy bricks - somehow they get heavier when they're sleeping, I don't get it. Becca is in bed with a pile of books as big as she is and whenever she finishes one we hear a THUD as she tosses it onto the floor. Tonight she is reading everything from dinosaurs to bumble bees to wiggly teeth. Sarah is in her room reading a book on Egypt after doing every math problem on the face of the earth.

Sarah had middle school orientation today. For God's sake! She's 11. When did that happen, exactly?

One of the news items she was very excited to report is that PE is optional - you can be permanently excused from PE by proving you are in an organized sport outside of school for at least 200 minutes a week. Of course, our time at the ice arena every week more than qualifies...

"Because Mom! If you do PE, you like have to go into a locker room with aaaaallll the other girls at school, and CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES."

"Oh shock and alarm. You are kidding. They make you change in front of girls?"

"Really Mom, don't kid around, I am NOT going to want to do that."

"Sarah, you have to take PE. How else are you going to become self-conscious about your body? This is unacceptable. It's like they are taking a part of the whole middle school experience away from you!"

"Mom you aren't making any sense."

Well, perhaps not. But what is middle school good for, except gaining the knowledge that you are a pod-person, totally geeky and self-conscious and afraid that you might be stuck as a dork forever? PE is Ground Zero for all that. You have to change in front of other girls and you see their bodies and realize Nature is conspiring to change you all. You sweat and smell bad and wonder if your deodorant is going to hold up. You have smelly gym clothes and have to suffer humiliation if they fall out of your backpack. This is the stuff, I tell you!

"I think you just want me to be as humiliated as you were."

Yes I admit it. Humiliation gives you an edge. Everyone knows that to develop muscle, you have to have resistance. Otherwise you're just mushy. I say up with public school PE. It's almost as good as public speaking for building that awkward teenage character.