Humor: Thou shalt not forget to bring thine P.E. gear

Thou shalt not forget to bring thine P.E. gear

Father's Day is rapidly approaching here in Australia and I just know I am going to be made to pick up litter at my son Jack's school.

Perhaps I am paranoid, but I have good reason to be fearful.

To mark Father's Day, Jack, 5, and his classmates have invited their dads to come to their school on Wednesday, September 5 for a barbecue lunch and to join in a Physical Education session.

"P.E.!" I exclaimed to my wife Katherine when I realised what might be in store for me.
"Can't I just go for the sausages?"

"No, you cannot," said Katherine.

"But it's not fair," I said. "They never made YOU do P.E. when they invited you to school to celebrate Mother's Day.
"I HATED Physical Education classes when I was at school. Now I am 42 - nearly 43 - what makes anyone think I have suddenly grown fond of it?"

"Come on, it won't be that bad," Katherine said. "It is a class of four- and five-year-olds. How hard could it be?"

"That's what worries me," I said, thoughts flicking through my mind of five-mile three-legged races, 10-mile sack races, triathlons and biathlons.
I was always the puny, asthmatic little student who always forgot to bring his P.E. gear, accidentally on purpose.
To some, this was a fate worse than death.
You have heard about the 10 Commandments?
Well, this was the 11th: "Thou shalt not forget to bring thine P.E. gear."

The penance never varied much.

"You can pick up 100 papers on the oval," barked the P.E. teacher. "That will teach you to bring your P.E. gear."

Of course, it never did.
It was a punishment that hardly fitted the crime.
And it did nothing to make me reconsider my opinions about the intelligence of some of my P.E. teachers.

On one of the rare occasions I actually took my P.E. gear to school, the teacher got us to do 100-yard sprints.
All the boys had to complete the distance in a certain time. I forget the time. I think it was closer to eight seconds than my personal best of 33.6 seconds
If, like me, you could not meet the qualifying time because you had little legs, the teacher made you run it again. And again. And again. Until you could!
D'oh!

Of course, behaviour management has changed a bit since I went to school.

I know this because I went to a behaviour management session for parents the other week.

The days of being sent for the vice-principal's office for the cane because you only managed to find 98 papers instead of the 100 ordered, have, fortunately, gone.

One of the favoured methods of correcting behaviour now is to make the naughty child sit in a chair, being deprived of joining in other more interesting activities, until he or she can verbalise a plan of better conduct.

I am greatly in favour of this method - even more so after reading the information about the Father's Day function in the latest newsletter from Jack's school.

"Please bring or wear your joggers," the newsletter asked the fathers.

"See, I told you," I said to Katherine. "They want us to do some serious P.E. Probably the half-marathon."

"What are you going to do?" asked Katherine. "You haven't even got any joggers."

"I dunno," I said.
"I'm really hoping that I will be made to sit in the chair while the others are having 'fun' at P.E.
"If I can't come up with a plan of better conduct, though, I guess I will be sent to pick up papers, like always."

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it