The first time I got a clue was in PE.
Physical Education it stands for, although, personally, I thought Persecution and Excruciation were more appropriate. High School was a big change from Intermediate, in many ways, some for the better and some for the worse. One of the worse was PE. Old Mr Saltham, who had been in the navy, was in charge of the Persecution & Excruciation department, and he took our class for PE.
Mr Saltham, ‘Old Sea Salt’ we called him, because of his time in the navy, barked orders as though you were deck hands. If you didn’t succeed at something he’d make you do it again, and if you simply couldn’t succeed at something he’d make you keep trying until you’d humiliated yourself in front of the whole class, and then he’d give you detention.
I’m going to be fair here and admit that this approach actually worked on some kids. Some kids who were lacking in confidence would end up succeeding at something they didn’t think they could do, and that gave them the confidence to try other things they didn’t think they could do and before long they were into everything; so Old Sea Salt did have some success.
However, that was some kids. Not all kids. For many of us, and you’ll notice that I said us, Saltham’s tactics were terrifying and made us even more convinced that we were useless at anything physically demanding.
Old Sea Salt was short and wiry and what little hair he had was cropped close to his scalp. He may not have been all that tall, but he seemed twice the size when he started shouting. I suppose he was used to dealing with a tough bunch of sailors, so kids like us were easy meat.
One of Saltham’s favourite exercises was a version of bullrush. It was a bit simpler, though, and much more violent. He’d line up half the class on one side of the gym, and the other half on the other side. In the dead centre of the floor was a big circle which was something to do with netball. When he blew his whistle, everybody had to run to the other side of the hall. But they had to run through the circle. It was like rush hour on one of those Japanese commuter trains where they pack people in like sardines, only half the people were running in one direction, and the rest were going in the other. If you were on the outside you risked getting bumped out of the circle and having to do push-ups. If you were on the inside it was like being crushed in a lemon squeezer.
The last time we had done the exercise I had been on the inside. That was tough, because I was one of the smaller kids in the class and behind me I’d had a couple of the biggest, while in front of me, going the other way, had been the captain of the rugby league team, Phil Domane, and his huge mate (and star league player) Blocker Blüchner. I’d been squeezed between the two sides until I thought I was going to pop up into the air like an orange pip you squeeze between your fingers. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even get enough air into my lungs to scream, which was probably just as well as they would have thought I was a wuss, and I would have got detention as well.
Just when I’d thought I was dead, the pressure from behind had squeezed me through a small gap between Phil and Blocker and, after taking an anonymous elbow in the side of the head that made my eyes water, and bouncing off a few other guys, I was finally through and over to the other wall.
That had been a week earlier. Now it was PE again, and I was scared out of my wits that we were going to have to go through the same thing. Only this time I might not be so lucky. This time I might not survive.
The lesson was just all the usual tortures until the last few minutes. We had finished a long arduous exercise that involved throwing around medicine balls, and had packed the gear away. Then we just milled around for a moment wondering what Old Sea Salt would set us to do for the last few minutes of the period.
He walked to the centre of the hall, in the middle of the netball circle and looked at us. There were just four minutes left in the period. Saltham never let you go early; it would be undisciplined. I could see him considering, and I knew he was going to make us do the bullrush exercise.
Don’t do the bullrush exercise, I thought at him desperately, trying to will him not to. Let them all go early. I thought it over and over, staring at him, as if somehow I could make up his mind for him.
‘That’s enough for today,’ he said at last, glancing up at the clock on the wall. ‘Off you go, get changed, see you on Thursday.’
Everybody rushed for the changing rooms, surprised beyond belief. But as Old Sea Salt walked past me, staring straight ahead, I thought he looked a little surprised as well.
I didn’t think much of it, though. Just lucky, I thought.
Until the next time.