I am going to start this off with a confession: I, Elliot Jack Morris, have never in my life been to either the SERF or the Nat. I walk past the SERF ever day with a feeling of guilt that I’m trashing my body internally by rarely demonstrating any physical exertion. Still, however soul-crushing this feeling is, it’s never quite enough to actually get my ass to the gym like my arteries crave so desperately.
It’s not even that I don’t like exercise. The few times a rare and exceptional situation forces me to actually move faster than a brisk walk, I love how I feel afterwards. The burn in my lungs, the unusually audible wheezing and the fire-engine red face may suck for a while, but after a nice cool-down I genuinely feel like I can breath better and am physically better off than before.
Growing up, I was a madman about sports in gym class. What do I mean by madman? I’m pretty competitive by nature and hate losing more than almost anything. Which is really too bad, because my body does— and always has—resembled a giraffe far more than the killing machine of a tiger I would have needed to actually win. I tried so hard every day to be victorious, but almost always ended up getting kicked out of the game because I resorted to hitting people’s shins with our floor hockey sticks to compensate for my lack of stature.
Believe me, my dad tried to get me to play everything from soccer (literally everybody played soccer as a kid) to basketball, where I accumulated a celebrated 3-year career record of 2 points, I kid you not. I even had a couple years trying out golf, which didn’t require running, but unfortunately did require being able to withstand the heat long enough to avoid getting nauseous and throwing up on the 14th hole green, which happened more than once.
You can imagine my delight when I made a fantastic discovery. I realized in seventh grade that I was actually really bomb at badminton. Sure, it’s a low-impact sport, but at least I whiffed it far less than I did in t-ball. Our gym class tournament was coming up, and I knew I could make a good showing, if not sweep the whole thing. I made it past the first round in a rousing victory against a girl with two broken thumbs, but experienced heartbreaking defeat in the second round that ended with a trip to the principal’s office for throwing the racquet at the other kid out of hatred.
I learned three things from this experience. I should have realized the first after only one gym class, which is that badminton is neither difficult whatsoever, nor a cool sport to be good at. The second is that instead of focusing time and attention to actually being good at physical activities, I should put this wasted effort into spreading horrible rumors about the kids who are actually good athletes to knock em down a peg or two. And the third is that sports are dumb and I should never ever try them again.
It’s hard out there for a giraffe. Console Elliot or challenge him to a footrace at ejmorris2@wisc.edu.
