Physical Education

As a youngster, I took considerable pride in my ability to easily touch my toes. I had countless opportunities to display this prowess as it seemed that toe-touching (with one's knees locked, of course) was the cornerstone of all calisthenics. My peers would always moan and groan whenever it was time to touch one's toes, but I'd perform the task with gusto. If we were standing rather than sitting then I liked to fold my wrists out and press my palms flat against the ground in order to better demonstrate my great stretchiness. My classmates and teammates mocked me for supposedly being a showoff, but I felt it right to celebrate my achievement.

In my early teens, it dawned on me that the reason I could touch my toes with such ease was that my torso was disproportionately long. Or, rather, I should say that my legs were disproportionately short.

Obviously I immediately became terribly embarrassed of my short legs. I started wearing motorcycle boots with heels so as to get that extra centimeter or two of leg length. Had cross-dressing been a viable option, I would have switched to dresses as I thought they might better hide my shamefully meager legs/torso ratio.

Needless to say, I stopped reveling in my ability to touch my toes. For me, toe-touching became psychological torture. It was physical torture also. As the angle created by my torso and legs became more acute, so did my nausea. I'm sure my parents would have been willing to apply for some sort of medical waiver exempting me from PE, but I knew that if I revealed my newfound distaste for toe-touching then I ran the risk that my peers would catch on to me and notice my teeny, tiny legs. They'd tear me to shreds. "Hey, knuckle-scraper," they'd say, "why don't you go climb a tree? The Neanderthals called; they said you gotta go home soon. Dance like a monkey for me, bitch." Kids can be so cruel.

So I started gradually reducing the apparent enthusiasm with which I'd touch my toes. Every day I'd go through the motions of toe-touching with a slightly less impressive show of élan than I'd put on the previous day. Eventually I was touching my toes in a completely lackluster fashion. The constant struggle, of course, was to not vomit.

I dreamed of grumbling alongside my proportionate friends; I envied them their gall as they whined ridiculously just because they had to bend their bodies in mildly uncomfortable ways while not even slightly nauseated. Sadly, theirs was a destiny not for me, not even to fake.

But then came college and with it some degree of liberation. I had a whole new set of peers and, except for summers and Christmases, I could be whomever I wanted to be.

College didn't have a PE requirement, and so I signed up for an elective, one-unit gym class. It wasn't really much of a class, though; everybody just came in and started lifting weights or whatever. There weren't any mandatory calisthenics. Nobody made anybody do anything. I spent the course wincing and complaining while I touched my toes on the mat in the corner. Occasionally someone would ask me why I was in pain, and I'd say that I must've pulled my hamstring or something but that, hell, I'd never really liked touching my toes anyway. "You're not supposed to be able to touch your toes," I'd say. "They're too far away. You gotta bend your knees."

By the end of the semester, I'd overcome my nausea. Shortly afterward, I realized that I had no interest in any sports or fitness activities that emphasized the physicality of my legs. (I did start working on my biceps and triceps, though, and to this day I have some pretty sweet guns.)

Later, in grad school, I discovered that I was at my best when seated. My long, gracefully august torso would tower over tables and desks, and I would govern proceedings with magnanimous bearing and much largesse. Sitting around a table, I was almost invariably the tallest fellow. Meanwhile, underneath the table, my little legs, without a care in the world, would swing idly from my chair. I tried to arrive early for classes and sessions so that I could always be seated by the time that everyone else arrived.

I took to wearing a hat while in transit. When I walked, I was like a duck on land, a self-conscious duck with a hat: my tiny legs, without the obscurity afforded by pond scum and murky water, struggled visibly to propel my substantial and impressive upper body with appropriate dignity, and so I would constantly fuss with my hat to draw attention away from my perverse gait. When forced by circumstance to arrive late to a meeting, I'd wave my hat with great flourish in order to distract people as I entered the room and headed quickly for my chair.

Now I'm fast approaching middle age and until this morning I hadn't toe-touched in decades. (I do, of course, continue to bathe my toes and clip my toenails as necessary, but I always bend my knees.) This morning, though, I happened to be sitting on the floor and I decided, "What the hell, why not? For old times' sake…."

I could do it, but only with extreme discomfort and only for about a half a second at a time. I sat there on my jute rug, my arms and legs outstretched, and I bobbed toward my toes. With the seventh or eighth bob, I experienced a painful muscle spasm in my mid-to-lower left back. Then the pain spread to a nerve running down from that section of my back through my left hip and into my left leg. The pain radiated out and into my bowels and left testicle. It was excruciating, and it lasted almost an hour. I remained on my floor, crumpled and whimpering, waiting for my suffering to pass. For a while there I thought I was going to need to call for an ambulance. Finally the pain subsided.

I feel a lot better now, I guess, but I won't be trying that exercise again any time soon. Only a fool doesn't learn from his mistakes.

Atticus And Marlo Toward The Light