I don't give a hoot about the football team, so why should you?

by Josh Stern

This opinion was submitted as a response to Really, what is the value of X?, an opinion published in the Silver Chips Print Edition. It is a satire piece and should not be interpreted literally.

My last fond memory of Gym was in the second grade. We were playing a game of dodge ball, and we got to play indoors where it was warm and there were two balls so more people got to throw them and the balls were colored neon green which really added to the futuristic effect that a name such as "Dodge ball" implies.

I had really managed to stay in the game, at least until the very end when someone noticed I was using a folding chair as a shield. After the class ended I was feeling pretty good about myself when suddenly pushups without bending at the knees hit me like a larger, denser, more metallic dodge ball across my tuchus.

I've already renounced any extracurricular activity that involves physical activity, even track, and my prior experience with those awful pushups makes me think I'm not missing out on much. I can understand how physical fitness could be useful for not dying at the age of 37 sitting on your toilet in the middle of eating a Big Mac, but the need to be able to climb a rope that leads to nowhere but the ceiling is just beyond my small, narrow-minded brain.

According to an informal Silver Chips poll of my parents, 100 percent say they do not use higher-level gym such as tennis or rope climbing in their lives, and 150 percent say they do not plan to compete in the 2002 Winter Olympics. I began to wonder why I have to take subjects like General Phys Ed 1, Specialty Phys Ed, or Personal Fitness, which in my educated opinion serve only to make me sweat a lot and fulfill Blair's mandatory one-year gym requirement.

My research indicated that the question was about as controversial as I had expected it to be, which was not at all, because I wouldn't have written this article if I knew I was wrong. Most people who think the same way as I agree that higher-level gym courses are useless in everyday life. The only real disagreement I found was with my gym teacher and several people I interviewed, but I won't accurately portray their side of the story because they are wrong.

Junior Richie B. Trippin believes that he learned everything he needed to about physical fitness in middle school. "I think that, like, people should just chill about the whole macho jock stuff, you know, just stay real chill about it. Because like, who's gonna use that stuff, man? I mean, who's gonna use it?" Trippin says he feels that staying physically fit should totally be up to that person and that people need to not be so uptight about lazy couch-potatoes.

Surprisingly, my gym teacher agrees. "Personally, I think that the fact that you're being put through weight training and jogging nearly every other day is ridiculous, since you're obviously too fat to do anything. Your gym clothes hardly fit, and it's downright depressing to watch you run in them."

According to soon-to-be-ex-junior Darryl Dropout, physical fitness is especially useless while job hunting, since you can just go to the career center and find a job using the computer. "At job interviews," he adds, "no one's going to ask you `Well, can you run a mile?'"

Nevertheless, Susan Myers, a completely random person who I only interviewed because she looked opinionated, believes that higher-level gym courses should remain mandatory for all students. "It's for your own benefit, really," she sputtered, "gym classes have a tendency to improve your health." Myers could provide no specific data on this so-called improvement when asked.

Sophomore John Squib says he uses gym skills during school and outside school. "Sure, I'm a pretty active guy, you know. I enjoy the outdoors a lot, and besides, [exercise] makes the heart more efficient which contributes to prolonging your life. This is demonstrated by the documented heart rate drop in athletes." (Author's note: Everyone knows that a slower heart makes you go slower, not faster! Try again, you stupid jock!)

Well after hearing about these alleged "benefits" of exercise, I began to speculate as to whether or not the gray-haired and therefore stupid President of the United States uses physical activity in his career. So I asked some more random people their opinion on this matter since rumors are generally true.

Ariella Heins wonders "How can a man who gets made fun of by Saturday Night Live so much be President? I got better grammar than that, so should I be President? No, of course not, so what I'm saying is that he needs to listen to the people more oftener."

According to this guy I know from Biology, at one point George Bush was in fact jogging in the White House backyard, when he tripped and fell. This is all the proof I need. Not only is physical activity unnecessary, but it puts innocent lives in danger.

Armed with my realization of the harms of physical labor and my recently published article in Silver Chips, my ego feels larger than it has in a long time. You can't stay trim without taking gym, but you can't be a jock without your brain turning to schlock.

Next in the Series: "I Don't Have No Need for English," "Foreign Language is for Fools," and "Science is Only Meant for Smart Kids."