The rope and other horrors from elementary school
I have but one remaining friend from elementary school and her name is Karen, Purveyor of All That is Good and Fun, but she allows me to simply call her Karen.
It feels like we met in fourth grade but I am positive we’ve been brothers in arms from sixth grade on. She and I were in Mr. Tyler’s class in sixth grade and I remember learning the alphabet in sign language so we could talk while he was up at the chalkboard.
As I recall, we would spell a word and then swipe the air to indicate the beginning of the next word. Naturally Mr. Tyler hated it when we did that, I can’t imagine why.
I’m pretty sure he was a recent transplant from the Deep South so he had a strong Southern accent. When he was pissed off his accent became extremely pronounced and I vividly remember his face getting red with frustration, which seemed to happen quite often.
Sweep the Leg, why would anyone want to be a junior high teacher?
Anyway, when he caught someone acting up in class he employed the Army Method of Punishment. If one person disrupted the class the whole class was going to be punished. No one liked that, but I’ve got to say I’ve employed that method more than once with my own children. It’s pretty effective here at Cardiogirl Manor.
It seems like he was all talk and no action most of the time, but his threat was always, always, “If ya’ll don’t stop, ahm gone go tell Coach! Ahm gone tell Coach!”
I do remember him saying that all the time, but I didn’t remember what would happen if he actually did tell Coach. Further I don’t remember a coach of any sort in that school.
So I turned to Karen and this is how our email conversation went.
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Hey Karen,
Who was “Coach” as in, “I’m gonna go tell Coach.” I know Tyler said it all the time but even back then I didn’t know who the hell he was talking about.
We were still in Anderson, weren’t we? Was there a Coach at Anderson?
Do tell.
Cardiogirl
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Yes indeed there was a coach at Anderson. Remember trying to climb the dreaded rope? I don’t remember his name, but I remember that he was a relatively young guy. My memory was that he was in his thirties, but he could have been in his twenties since that would have seemed “old” to us at that age. (We’re both 41.)
Tyler’s idea of telling coach was that coach would make us do laps around the gym as punishment. I think he actually had us do that a few times, but I’m not sure.
Karen
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Yes, I remember that hellish rope. God that’s a post right there although I don’t really remember more than standing on the knot and trying to jump while pulling my body up. Period.
Never got any higher than that and what the hell was wrong with that coach not trying to give suggestions on HOW TO CLIMB THAT EFFER?
I cannot believe that I have zero memory of a person, much less a coach, during the gym class. I always want to think it was the junior high coach Mr. E something, like Eisenhauer but that’s not it.
Remember it was him or that mean lady (Miss F something) in junior high who everyone said was having an affair with that scum bucket Wilkinson?
Now that you’ve mentioned running laps that seems vaguely familiar. It was on the very outside of the gym floor, right next to the walls, wasn’t it? And it makes total sense that Tyler was threatening to make us run laps if we didn’t get in line.
Man he must have hated his job as a teacher.
Cardiogirl
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(Later email from me after some serious contemplation)
I remembered! The gym teacher’s name in junior high was Eichbauer. Man I was so proud of myself. I thought of it driving home from school yesterday and actually said it out loud, “Eichbauer!”
Yeah!
Cardiogirl
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That’s amazing that you can remember that. I had the female teacher Ms. F-whatever. You’d think I would remember her name because I HATED her. She gave me a D one semester. Total Evil Bitch.
Karen
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She seriously gave you a D. In GYM? She was a Total Evil Bitch. Damn. I truly want to remember her name. It will eat at me for quite some time but it’s going to be extra difficult because I know I never had her so her name is just ancillary information floating in my head.
Whereas Eichbauer’s name was primary, necessary information tucked away in the folds of my mind.
Cardiogirl
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Fiola. Ms. Fiola. I’m pretty sure that was her name. Evil woman. Another chesnut from that period: We all had to lie on the floor with our feet in the air as she checked us for warts. Guess who had one? Yep, I had a damn planter’s wart on my foot and she announced it to the whole class. Ahhhh, memories.
Karen
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Karen you are awesome! I was just pouring my coffee thinking, ‘What was her name?! Fine, Feeney?’ And here you are providing the answers. Stellar job.
Uh, that is seriously messed up. WTF? You had to lie on the floor, barefoot, with your feet in the air? I am so glad I had Eichbauer.
Cardiogirl
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(Later email from me after some more intense contemplation)
I really am curious about her checking your, uh, bare feet. Where did you lie for her to inspect?
Cardiogirl
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Oh Fiola! That evil woman. She had us all lie on the gym floor, barefoot, with our feet in the air. Then she “examined” our feet by pressing on the bottom of our feet with her car keys! Yes!
Karen
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Karen, I have not burst out laughing like that in a long time. That was a turbo laugh. Her car keys, eh?
Cardiogirl
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I knew you must be laughing…they could have been work keys :) :) but you get the idea.
Karen
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That’s really nuts. I can’t believe she was allowed to do that.
Cardiogirl
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Scarred for life…
Karen
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I think I might have some PTSD by association from that.
Cardiogirl
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Yeah, I wonder if teachers still get away with shit like that today.
Karen
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Aaand scene.
Tags: Things that are jacked up
They still do. One of mine once said I had fleas.
What?! Your teacher said you had fleas?! Wow, that sucks.
Oh, God, I could go on a big long diatribe about teachers “nowadays”. I won’t. I don’t want to THINK about teachers “nowadays”, let alone discuss them or deal with them. ‘Nuff said. The tears are starting again.
Man that sucks it royally. Let’s think about unicorns instead.
That is some twisted shit. I mean, these days, couldn’t they fire the woman for such a thing? And that damned rope. When we would walk into gym and see it hanging there, I got an instant case of diarrhea.
It is extremely crazy to me. I’m so surprised I never heard other girls talking about the, um, foot inspection, at the time. I guess Karen must have repressed it.
And yeah, that fucking rope triggered huge anxiety and very large sweat stains on my shirt. I wonder if they still have a rope for kids to climb in gym. HATED that thing. Just seeing it really ruined my day. What’s the point? Why did we have to try to climb it?
Oh, C-girl, I love you, man. You truly are like a sister to me. (the good kind) Yes, I was so humiliated by that key episode that I pushed it deep down inside. Of course, I was convinced that the entire school knew I had a wart on my foot.
Right back atcha chica. And I am glad you clarified the good kind, we both know I have some of the, uh, other kind.
So glad I could bring that stuff back up for you :)
Our gym teachers never inspected us for anything embarrassing, warts or otherwise. I hated gym too — partly because I’m chubby and anything but athletic, but partly because I got sick of the other girls in my class. In high school we had block scheduling, which meant we had four classes a day, instead of seven, and we had a specific class only every other day. That meant 90 minutes of gym. Do you know how many innings of softball you have to play in 90 minutes? Add to that the stupid girls who would shriek in mock horror when the ball came near them, and you can see my frustration. Gahh.
I hated that rope too, and I hated any kid who could shimmy up that damn thing like it was nothing.
You know I can’t even remember if we had gym in high school. Wait, wait. I just remembered the locker room — all pink lest a boy stumble in by accident.
Guess that was repressed. Ugh, more memories. Wasn’t it awesome having to change clothes next to a couple of chicks who hated you because you were not popular enough to share oxygen with them?
I think we had to take gym until our junior year and then it was optional. Like anyone was gonna choose to take gym in 11th grade.
That would suck it so hard if I had to endure gym for 90 minutes.
The boys gym teacher was our threat.. Mr. Beck. He had a paddle with holes in it so he could swing it faster. Anyone caught fighting got smacked with the paddle, even if they were only defending themselves. I’ve seen lots of boys crying after that! The paddle was worse than the embarrassment of running from a fight.
And BTW, I graduated in 1971, and remembered Mr Beck’s name. I guess he was a significant enough threat back then for me to remember!
Things were pretty wild back in the ’70s and ’80s regarding punishment, weren’t they? I remember seeing that wooden paddle with holes in it at our ELEMENTARY school.
Mr. Zellman was the principal. I really loved him and he liked me back so I never saw the paddle up close. But this is super wild — he also had a CONVERSE LOW TOP that he used to beat the unruly children.
It was just the rubber sole, somehow he defaced that shoe and ripped the top off so it was just the fabric the bottom of your foot rests on and the web of diamonds in the rubber on the very bottom.
And I am positive it was Converse because of the design on the bottom of the sole.
I might have to write a post about that. The first thought that comes to mind is that the Converse Low Top represented my repressed desire to beat the shit out of all the popular kids who shunned me.
Yeah, just call me Carrie.
We didn’t have the rope. We did have a huge peg board like thing you had to try and climb with two big wooden dowels.
We also had two gym teachers in an affair. Ms. Goodwin and Mr. Lewis I remember them distinctly.
She would basically chase the larger kids when we were running laps and make fun of them for getting lapped by the other kids who were faster. Now that’s some motivation to run faster. She was a terrible person. We also had Ms. Jackson, she was really nice even though she wore blue eyeshadow and banana clips.
That’s all I’m saying about Jr. high. It was a very dark three years. Literally, I wore black and only came out of my room for dinner.
OMG, Elizabeth! I remember the peg board!! I used it once, the peg slipped out and damaged my eye! NOT KIDDING! I had to go to the hospital and had to wear a patch for 2 weeks to let it heal! I looked like a freaking pirate for 2 whole weeks in the 5th grade. Now you tell me I wasn’t scarred by that. And no, I did not have a peg leg or a parrot.
@Liz That peg board sounds sorta fun. Were there a bunch of dowels sticking out or did you have dowels in your hands and you had to poke one in the hole, pull yourself up, poke another in a hole, etc.?
Man Goodwin sounds like she had a knack of really instilling some self esteem, eh?
@Lin Damn Lin! Did they discontinue use of the peg board after that incident?
It’s the latter. So you hold yourself up with one arm while you put the peg in the next hole. It’s an issue of great pride if you could get to the top. It’s fun for everyone until puberty hit and only one or two people could do it anymore.
She’s a terrible person, the old bat. I distinctly remember her using an analogy about holes the size of bulletin boards in condoms with a pregnant sitting there girl in the class. Yes, I’m from one of those areas where girls get pregnant at 12 or 13. Abstinence only education at its’ best. I was lucky enough to be a good enough brown noser to escape her personal tirades against pre-teens.
Oh, my gosh. From rope-climbing to wart-checking, this was exciting!
I love that you and your awesome friend actually learned sign language to communicate.
I was in a similar class (with a similar friend), and we actually spoke in cockeyed Latin to each other. We called ourselves Corpus Erectus, which we imagined to mean “Body Snatchers.” GOD, I haven’t thought about that in a while.
Isn’t that funny? I can still remember all of the letters of the alphabet except Q and X. Huh, Googled that and I do not remember using those two symbols. Maybe I didn’t spell words with Q or X.
Man I love the idea of speaking Latin! Viva la Corpus Erectus!
Omg, that is nuts! I have never heard of that before, a gym teacher checking students’ feet for warts? And with keys no less? How did that work? Yuck!
The only thing I remember being checked for in gym was scoliosis. They lined the girls up with their shirts off in the locker room, and you had to walk a line to the nurse across the room and then bend over in front of her so she could see if your spine was straight. So embarrassing at that age, especially if you weren’t wearing a bra.
And that damned rope. I never climbed that thing once!! I just never had the arm strength.
Aahhh, junior high. What fun.
Oh I remember the scoliosis check too! I think, not positive, we just pulled our shirt up above our shoulder blades and bent over. And I’m sure the teacher/nurse/whoever barked, “Bend over!” instead of saying something like “Touch your toes.”
Talk about taking it with no lube.
I’m with Kari, I only remember being checked for during gym class was scoliosis in 7th grade. The school nurse (my mom), lucky me…lol and possibly a doctor had you take off our shirt and bend over so they could see if your spine was ok.
We never had to try to climb the rope, thank goodness. I know there was a rope in the high school gym but we never tried it.
I wonder if there was a doctor or nurse present at our school when we were checked. Man do elementary schools still have nurses? My kids’ school does not have a nurse.
How great you have an elementary school friend to reminisce and “fill in the gaps” for each other.
I had Mrs. Lodge for Kindergarten and again in the 3rd grade. She was really weird and mean. She terrorized us on a regular basis. I remembered mentioning that to my dad when I was in my late teens and he was *shocked* — apparently Mrs. Lodge had a really effective “public mask” and was able to charm all parents (and other grownups, presumably.)
It was a revelation to me that adults could be so two-faced when it came to kids!
It is cool being able to piece stuff together.
Um, that lady sounds extremely crazy. That’s like the nun at my mom’s school who gave her a bloody nose (!) and then told her she would kill her if she ever told how she actually got a bloody nose.
That’s some effed up stuff right there. Doesn’t it seem like the other kids in the class would have been witnesses to the bloodshed and that they would have corroborated her story?
Oh, the horror of the rope! I think I am still scarred by it.
Guess we all had some crazy teachers. Our school allowed bare butt paddling when I was in 4th grade. The teacher had dice made up from 1 foot square pieces of foam, and you had to roll for the number of whacks you would get.
I never got paddled, though.
WHAT?! That sounds like something out of a novel. Damn, I’d be hopin’ for snake eyes.
I have nothing to offer in the way of gym class problems, except for the time we got in trouble for throwing wads of wet & soapy toilet paper up to the ceiling and made them stick. They looked like little clumps of mashed potatoes.
Ok, so that was nothing compared to your fun story. I just wanted to say that I love reading your posts after a long day at work. They’re like dessert.
That sounds like fun throwing wads of paper on the ceiling, actually. My kids just discovered that this summer. Except they threw the wads against the house and they stuck to the aluminum siding.
I had to use the hose to get the wads off. Naturally they thought that was best thing ever.
Gosh, thanks Kathy! I love the idea of being a calorie-free dessert of your choice.
Oh no! That wasn’t part of the Presidential Physical Fitness Award/Test/Thing was it? Everyone had to climb the rope, but the chin ups/pull ups were much more dreaded. How in third grade were we supposed to have the upper body strength of a 30 year old man? We were such a bunch of little girls in comparison. Oh wait. yeah…we were supposed to be little girls.
Howdy Chris, welcome to the Cardiogirl Empire (just typed goirl — must be my inner Hebrew trying to get out — Yishar Koach.)
Ugh, I remember the Presidential Fitness Awards. I recall a few green ribbons which sucked because they were not the highly-coveted blue ribbons.
And now that you mention it, yeah! How were we supposed to have any upper body strength?
My memory of the scoliosis check was in 7th grade by a nurse in the school office. I think they checked us one by one instead of in a group. Sounds like there are a lot of messed up stories out there. It puts my wart experience in perpective. I would like to think that things are better now.
Isn’t it funny, I don’t remember a nurse. At. All.
But I know I had a very, very slight case, just enough to mess up a hemline by an inch or so. Otherwise it doesn’t cause me any trouble. Maybe I have that non-existent nurse to thanks.
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