Poetry Monday: Sport Shorts

Well, folks, it's that day of the week again, the day we put on our togas or our peasant shirts or our smoking jackets (what DO poets wear, anyway?) and lie around on our chaise lounges or our Ikea furniture or our (imitation) leather couches (what DO poets recline on, anyway?) and scratch out poetry with our chisel-and-rock or our stubby pencils or our fountain pens (what DO poets write with, anyway?) . . . or, more likely, we sit at our computers trying to fend off curious cats. Or is that just me?

Today's theme is "sports" and you can find sports-related poems at Diane's blog (HERE) and Delores' blog (HERE), as well as right here on Procrastinating Donkey (including Joan's poetry from Joan of Devon, in the comments). Feel free to read, write, or contribute in any way. Have fun!

I have to say right here that I'm not really a sports fan. I'm a fan of sitting. There isn't much sitting in most sports, and even the ones that do involve sitting don't let you get away with doing nothing, as your arms are in constant use (eg., rowing, paddling, kayaking) or else you are in constant danger from excessive speed (eg., bobsledding, racing).

I've never been coordinated, I've never had a personal energy surplus, and my speed and balance are below average. I don't like danger and I don't like competition and I'm not motivated by winning or losing. I don't like doing anything that requires strapping things to my feet or any other part of my body, or anything that might cause me sudden pain from being hit in the face or stomach or from breaking a bone, and I really, really, really don't like wearing spandex or a wetsuit or a helmet.

Nevertheless, in my high school--and probably in yours--gym class was a compulsory course.

And we had a compulsory uniform. For girls, this was called a "gym suit" and was a one piece article of clothing, in school colours, that looked like a blouse sewn to a pair of short shorts and buttoned up the front. For boys, the uniform was short gym shorts in school colours, topped with a plain white T-shirt. The most important word to remember for the sake of the following poem is "short." Remember we are talking the late sixties, early seventies here. There were no long baggy shorts for guys and those gym suits had no mercy for girls whose thighs weren't perfect.

Enough background! Time for the poem of the day.


As I Remember Gym Class

She cavorts;
He cavorts;
They all cavort in short shorts.

They'd rather not--
Unless they're hot
And like to show off what they've got.

The rest of them
Themselves condemn,
And wish for shorts with longer hems.

*****

Here is what our gym outfits looked like, approximately, except ours were maroon because our school colours were maroon and grey:

His

Hers

 *****


What did you wear in gym class? Did you like sports, loathe them, or was it a mixed bag?

P. S. I may have slightly overstated my aversion to sports :)