There once was a chubby medium-sized boy who’s parents hailed from a foreign land. On one particularly cold wet winter morning, he walked towards school at a snails pace in anticipation and fear of period one, his least favourite lesson…Physical Education aka PE!
The whole year did PE together and the Head of the Physical Education department announced in assembly earlier in the week that it was now rugby season for the boys and to ensure they brought along all the correct equipment. The boy didn’t want to play rugby. He was one of the smaller boys in his year group, fat, obese, unfit, weak and was constantly pushed, pulled and knocked over in to and through the mud. Worse than the rugby for the boy was the use of the communal showers after the game with all the bigger boys who’d be showing off their big dicks, pubic hair and developed bodies.
Just before he arrived he decided too slip in to the recreation ground next to school, where he saw the ground already saturated with a high water table, and pulled out a notepad and pen. He did something he knew was wrong but felt was his only way to get out of PE and away from the taunting of all the other boys in the showers. He decided to write a note to the PE teacher, forging the signature of his mother, to get himself out of playing rugby. His reason for not participating was that he had not been feeling very well.
He sat in assembly unable to concentrate on what the Headmaster was saying, as all he could think about was PE, handing the note the teacher and hoping the 6’5” ex-Army Warrant Officer Mr Manton would accept the forged note and excuse him from rugby.
The bell rang and he moved at a glacial pace, allowed all the other boys to get ahead of him in to the changing room. He by-passed his usual corner spot with all the other fat kids and losers and continued his slow ascent to Mr Manton’s office. He avoided making eye contact with any of the other, more lean and athletic, boys who got changed opposite Manton’s office. He handed in the note, Manton took it, slammed it down on his desk and without even looking at the boy gestured for him to join the line with all the other boys who were also not doing PE, while he aggressively punched buttons on a telephone with his jumbo sausage sized fingers.
After several minutes he emerged from his office, wearing combat-95 patterned Army combat trousers and a navy blue sweatshirt emblazed with the school logo. “SILENCE YOU FUCKING GOBSHITES!” he shouted as the charisma-filled schoolboys stopped talking and turned to face Manton. It was so silent, the boy could hear himself breath and his stomach rumble. Manton went along the line and asked each boy individually why they were not doing PE while he scribbled notes on his clipboard. “And what’s your fucking problem?” Each excuse the same as the last, “I’m a Muslim Sir, it’s Ramadan, I’m fasting”. Manton stopped halfway down the line before he even got to the medium-sized lazy PE dodger.
Manton took a step back, put his clipboard down, looked at the dozen or so boys and stared at them all. “Ok, listen in, I’ve just got off the phone from a friend of mine, Mr Green, who is the Head of Physical Education at Loxford High School in East London…he said 85% of his students are Muslim, they are also fasting and are all doing PE today”. There were audible gasps from all corners off the room. “And you all look fine to me!” He turned around and dropped the lost property box infront of the line up of boys and said “You better find some kit and be ready to go within the next five minutes!” The changing room erupted with laughter as Mr Manton about-turned and walked off. He turned again just as he got to his office door, pointed at the line up of boys with his clipboard and shouted “OH AND I’LL BE CALLING ALL OF YOUR PARENTS TO EXPLAINED WHAT HAS HAPPENED TODAY!” He turned in to his office “Ramadan my fucking arse!”
The medium-sized boy wanted to plead with the teacher to not to call his mother, he knew he’d be in big trouble and lose his privelidges, pocket money, double puddings after dinner and computer game time. He was often referred to as ‘lazy’ in his last school report and this was more evidence of his laziness. He was warned by both parents that if he didn’t start making changes then they would make them for him! Unfortunately, he never got a moment alone with the teacher during the lesson or after as he hid in the toilet cubicle while the majority of the year group passed through the showers. He stressed about Manton’s phone call to his mother all day, which distracted him from concentrating in each and every lesson.
The bell rang at the end of the day’s final lesson and for the end of the school day but instead of moving at the speed of a thousand gazelles to get home and watch Blue Peter, he moved at the slowest he had moved all day to embark on the short journey home and to receive whatever punishment awaited him. As he exited the building Mr Manton was about to go in and stopped the boy. “Eh big lad, you did really well in rugby today, good lad, oh and I didn’t get a chance to call your mother, but if she has an issue with you doing PE today, you tell her to call my office.”
Instantly, it was like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt taller and that the spring in his step had returned. He’d got away with it but sadly not the showers, which despite killing time in the toilet cubicle he still had to endure with some the other more developed, but no so obnoxious, boys and then put on his clothes while he was wet as he didn’t have a towel!
Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but in life you have to take the rough with the smooth.
ISK 