How to get out of gym class
Today’s question comes to us from Nika:
Do you think I will fail gym class if I skip it and go sit in a dark closet with my three friends and exchange our deepest darkest secrets?
First of all; gym class absolutely sucks.
Which is not to say that the goals it pretends to achieve are bad. They’re not. Being active is good. Taking care of your body is important. Teamwork is a critical life skill. But for a class that’s supposed to teach those things, gym class ends up being a lot of standing around, being taught to hate your body, being mocked and bullied, and establishing social pecking orders. It’s state-sanctioned Lord of the Flies cosplay generally taught by a football coach who begrudgingly teaches a class in order to get hired in an academic setting, or a Social Studies teacher who drew the short straw and is using the opportunity to set up his own Stanford Prison Experiment. (Which has been debunked, by the way.)
So it’s totally understandable, even commendable that you’ve seen through the bullshit and decided to sit in a dark closet with three friends exchanging your deepest darkest secrets.
But you didn’t ask me if that was ok to do, which means you already know it is. You asked me if this might lead to failing gym class. To be brutally honest, the answer is a very strong most likely. Depending on how often you skip it.
The good news is that gym class is relatively easy to get out of, mostly because the only person who wants to be there less than you is your gym teacher. And like most of the adults you will interact with for the rest of your life, your gym teacher isn’t really concerned about whether the reason for getting out of class is legitimate (all reasons for getting out of gym class, or any other toxic situation, are legitimate) but rather making sure their ass is covered.
This means you will need a note.
The easiest way to get a note is to forge one. I could sign both my parents’ names by the time I was six. The key to a good forged note is to be vague, and to prey on your gym teacher’s areas of discomfort. (No male gym teacher knows how a woman’s body works, by the way. Yes, that same male gym teacher will teach a health class on that very topic.) You need to put yourself in the frame of mind of a busy parent who’s being asked to write a note in the middle of what they were already doing. It’s not gonna have a salutation. It’ll be a very quick sentence. “Nika can’t do gym class. Women’s issues.” That’s it. The more you explain the faker it looks.
Knowing how to forge a note is a great life skill, so it’s not a bad idea to learn how to do it early when the penalties are fairly light. You might get grounded for a bit, but it’s worth it. You don’t want your first forged note to be to your parole officer.
Of course, if your parents have liberal arts degrees, you can probably get them to write the note themselves. I guarantee you their memories of being bullied in gym class are still fresh. All you have to do is trigger those memories and they will write the note as if it were a time machine getting their own young selves out of that class.
You may also have some luck by getting a friendly teacher to get you out of class. By the time I was in high school I was spending gym class in the art room through a combination of becoming the type of teen that my gym teacher did not want to be around, and the type of teen that an art teacher thought of as gifted. (TL;DR: trenchcoat and mohawk.)
If you’re lucky enough to still have a school nurse, they can also be a fantastic resource.
And look, I’m joking around in here, but I’m by no means minimizing how traumatic this situation can be for kids, teens, and even adults. Gym class is the pits. Our bodies are wonderful but they’re also weird, and there’s a whole spectrum of ways in which they make us feel, and those feelings need to seen with a lot of kindness, understanding, and nuance. Because they’re real. Gym class operates in a blunt binary that’s beyond outdated. And I hope that in time, it’s reworked into something that actually helps you become more comfortable with the amazing person that you are, because you are.
Until then, you can also order fake casts online. A “broken” arm can cover almost a whole semester of gym class.
🙏 I’m outta here until January. Thanks for everyone who subscribed and possibly even enjoyed the newsletter this year. It’s been fun to write. Next year will suck, and any chance we have of surviving it will be because we’re surviving it together. So thanks for being here.
❓If you have a question, PLEASE ask it.
🍉 It’s the end of the year, so I’m not gonna ask you to buy anything. HOWEVER, you can still be amazing and donate a little something to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund because they could really use it.