A tale of weakness and moral outrage.
It was the summer of '08, and I had completed my first semester as a rather long-in-the tooth junior at the local private college. All A's of course, but being a decade or so older than your classmates doesn't hurt when it comes to focus. It had been a long road just to get there, with precious little help from the University I might ad. But I was hanging on.
I always dreamed about going to a real University, not as an end in it's self, but as a path to spreading my love of History to as many people as possible. My first semester went great, not cheap, but great otherwise. Liked the professors, liked my fellow students, a few seemed to have real potential as human beings. Thinking about joining History club and getting to really experience some campus life, or at least as watered down a version as I could stand.
The trouble, and my lack of courage began to show it's self as I signed up for classes. High on my list of remaining requirements was the glaring PHE121, crap, why a Health class?? My Advisor was quick to brush aside my concern, assuring me it was something that could be slept through and still attain a B. Fine, I though, watch some movies and talk about healthy eating, No problem.
Not the crux of the problem is, I'm not the prototypical College Junior at this point. I'm a walking contradiction in Wranglers and a Co-op hat, even though I'm an avid bicyclist, I'm not avid enough. With my classic, pudgy German farmer build, (Short legs, long torso) I'm not built for speed of any sort of elegant fluidity of motion. Ok, I'm a big dumpy farmer. And thats how I show up for the first class, ahhh o, first thing I see wrong is it's in the athletic center aka the gymnasium, not good, I have not set foot in any sort of gym since jr High, it's against my personal beliefs! I find the room, a crowd of Children mulling outside the door... Freshmen, dressed in workout clothes... Crap... double crap, I'm standing out like a billboard, the big guy in jeans and T-shirt. The toddlers are looking at me too, like I'm a misplaced janitor or something. Thoughts about how much I hate college administrators are flying through my mind as the Professor pushes through and opens the door.
And bad got worse... This meatbag has "Coach" written all over him, it might as well be stamped on his forehead.. ()*&*&%^$%!! and other unrepeatables are flying though my mind at lightspeed. I have an aversion to coaches that runs so deep I skipped physical therapy after they rebuilt my knee! Chnka chunka chunka goes my heartbeat, every second this is looking more like some sort of horrid organized activity, how could these monsters be heartless enough to toss a 30 year old man with high blood pressure, an ulcer, acid reflux and a limp in here with a bunch of kids.
I stayed long enough to get the sylabis, which sadly confirmed my worst fears, words like BMI and maximum heart rate littered the page. My mind turned to mush and the wind fell from my sails like a ship in the doldrums. And I walked, no way I was going to spend $1500 for humiliation. Today, a year later, I might have limped my way around and embarassed myself for the semester. But probably not. I'm ashamed, and a bit dissapointed, but I still don't know quite why they could not have just let me skip that stupid class.
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