The Presidential Fitness Test

This blog entry inspired by the Omnibus episode featuring Ken Jennings and John Roderick, where they went into detail about the dreaded Presidential Fitness Test that was subjected to middle school kids around the country for the stated purpose of "making sure America was fit and at the ready in case of battle." I was a chubby kid and always dreaded the Presidential Fitness Test because it was done in front of everyone in the class, so the humiliation would not only be my own private humiliation of failure, it would be on display in front of the entire class that I couldn't do a pull-up, or couldn't climb the rope. To be fair, very few people could climb the rope, so I don't know why they made us do it.......our gym teacher would offer pithy comments like "Mind over matter," which kind of (I hate to say it) explains why he was a gym teacher and not a science teacher......science and physics over determination, just ask the victims of natural disasters. 

The fitness test was even sent back to my parents as a report card! I remember being so uptight about getting good grades in all my classes, I got blindsided by this report that said I was in the bottom percentile here, I got a "D" grade in terms of strength, endurance, basically all the attributes that athletic kids should have. Credit to my mom, she didn't think too much about it and just encouraged me to get good grades in the "real classes." But that fitness test definitely shook my self-esteem! All of the most worrisome thoughts for kids came into play back then, like not fitting in, everyone's ahead of me, I'm never going to be cool.......it's tough enough being a kid and at the bottom of the social pyramid, now the school just added another element where the cool jocks of the class got to show off their prowess and the weakling/nerdy kids further reinforced how uncool they were. Really unfair, and really a testament about how bad school can make people feel, and there's really no help from other kids, and teachers/ adults at the school are too busy with other students to care about your feelings, only if you get into a physical fight or cause parents to get involved that they would do anything about it. Of course it doesn't seem like a big deal for grown-up me as an adult, but as a kid I didn't know how to handle it and had doubt, fear, low self-esteem, all negative emotions well up inside of. It's hard enough to be an unpopular school in the US and people suffer real problems because of it, and the Presidential Fitness Test did not help. (Schools everywhere seemed to agree as they seem to have abandoned the test in 2013). There's also a broader point about how there are kids left on their own in middle school and beyond that go unnoticed, where the bullies of high school capitalize on their brief window of popularity and dominance over other kids by put-downs, ostracization, etc. It's really a jungle out there, and I wish I could go back and help my younger self back then, or I'm sure there's kids out there just like I was who were struggling with it. 

The one good thing I will say about the fitness test, there was one event that I did try to do something about, the mile run.......I was so embarrassed in 5th or 6th grade about my mile time which was like 10 minutes-plus or something, but that may have motivated me to try out for different sports instead of just stick to the books and chess club, thus I wound up in cross-country, found out what a difference running every day makes, and ran the mile in 7th grade in 7 minutes 7 seconds. I can still remember the look the jock who I beat out at the end that ROBERT YAN, of all people, notorious for being unfit and unable to do anything on the Presidential Fitness Test, beat him at the mile run. One of the more satisfying feelings I've ever had, and probably what motivated me to play dodgeball later on in life and show the jocks that despite outward appearances I could play a little bit too.