I always hated physical education when I was a kid. Mostly because of how awful PE made me feel about myself. Or rather, how awful the other kids made me feel about myself. When teams were set up I was always among the last to be picked. Sure, I wasn’t sporty but there were plenty of others who weren’t either. The problem with me was I wasn’t popular either. Other not so sporty kids who were popular where always picked before me, even though we were at the same level when it came to football (soccer), indoor bandy or whatever.
I could have done ok if I had been given a chance, but I never was. I stood at the edge of the field since no one passed me the ball anyway. I didn’t want them to pass me the ball because I thought I’d for sure screw up. At least they seemed to think I would. Why else would they pick me last and never pass me the ball? It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. They thought I sucked at sports and since they thought I did I thought they must be right, so I didn’t even try to be good at it and since I didn’t even try, it appeared as though I really did suck at sports. I wasn’t as terrible as I thought though.
Brännboll (a form of baseball) was a really popular sport to play during PE. When you play brännboll you strike the ball and try to run around the four corners of the field. Out on the field there are several players from the opposite team trying to catch your ball. If they do they get points. Since I was convinced I sucked at brännboll I always just hit the ball right down into the ground so it bounced, so at least no one could catch it and get a point for it. Then there was this teacher who took the time to try to teach me how to strike the ball for real. I even practised at home and got pretty good at it. Turned out I wasn’t all that horrible at brännboll after all. I wonder how good I would have been at other sports had I only tried and more importantly, had I only been given a chance to prove myself. But I was never given such a chance because I was unpopular.
When I was in high school PE was very different. There weren’t a whole lot of sporty people in my class so pretty much everyone was at my level. There weren’t really any popularity contests going on either since everyone just stuck to their group of friends and left everyone they didn’t like alone. There wasn’t even all that many people who disliked each other. This was a very different atmosphere from the one I was used to from grade 1-9. Still, I was so damaged from being told I sucked at sports for nine years that I didn’t really try during high school PE either. Most of all I had come to really hate the PE lessons. I didn’t reflect over why I hated them so much but in retrospect I think it wasn’t so much because high school PE was bad but because I had come to associate PE with bad things.
Why the hell do teachers let the students pick teams? I wonder if it ever occurred to my old teachers that the people who were always picked last maybe felt bad about it? That maybe it would be better to try to avoid making the team building into a popularity contest? Because that’s what it was. And always being among the last to be picked fucked up any self esteem I might have had about sports (and myself). So severely that I never gave PE or sports a chance again.
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