Where are your shorts?

When I hit junior high I was introduced to shorts and sneakers for gym. Not just any shorts, mind you. They had to be official Hicksville High shorts in black and orange as sold at Goldman Brothers Store in town. They had a sort of contract to supply official school wear. The girls had a whole jumper thing. Since we did not have lockers in junior high you had to wear your shorts under your regular pants on the days you had gym, usually twice a week. You could either wear or carry your sneakers. Parents bought most of our stuff, but the cool kids seemed to buy their own and came up with things like white sneakers. The cool kids carried their sneakers to school. The rest of us squeaked around the halls all day. For some strange reason, most of my gym classes were first thing in the morning. The coach wore a full-length sweatsuit. We, on the other hand, wore the equivalent of underwear. Coach would tell you to run around to get warm. Then along came ninth grade and a new horror: showers. Now I had not been seen in the buff since I was 4 years old. Suddenly I was to be required to stand with my fellows without a stitch. Talk about trauma.• • •Coach had an interesting way of organizing us for our team games. The first couple of classes I think he just sort of observed us until he had identified the natural leaders, i.e., the bullies. If there weren’t enough of those he could always fill in with anybody who was playing a varsity or junior varsity sport. Having done this he basically turned us loose for the rest of the period. This way, in football the littlest guys got to be blockers. The leaders could sort of pick them up by the back of the shirt and throw them into the opposition. In basketball all of the ball handling on your team was done by two guys who literally ran over the opposing extras. The extras were everybody except the two ball handlers. • • •In baseball the worst players were sent into the outfield because the leaders did not want to have to run all over the place after the ball. When you screwed up they would rant and shake their fist at you, thus building confidence and providing motivation for physical activity as part of a healthy lifestyle.One year we actually had written exams on the rules of the games, but the natural leaders weren’t so good at those so they dropped this pretty quickly. Besides, rules are for sissies. That’s what gym taught me.Bill Abrams resides, and when feeling sentimental puts on those Hicksville High shorts (yes, they still fit!), in Pine Plains.