Sports Horror? My One Moment of Sporting Glory!
My moment of gym-based glory came not on sports day but in a PE lesson.
Now physical feats of speed or endurance are not my thing. PE teacher never did learn my name. Not a bad thing. I'm more of a brainy type. Of course this means I had my fair share of bullying but I like to think it was jealousy based. I can see some of you are nodding and some want to punch me already.

Aged 12, at a selective boys grammar school, I'm trying to make my mark with a new load of 30 class mates. PE class warms up with the usual running around exercises until Sir sets one particular task.
"Everyone in the middle of the gym, now run and touch every wall and return to the centre"
This is the cue for every boy to immediately scatter to the middle of the nearest wall before turning around and running fast as their little spindly legs could carry them to the middle of the opposite wall (some unfortunately meeting another boy coming the other way) before returning to the middle of the gym, turning 90 degrees (or pi/2, as I like to think of it) and repeating with the last two opposite walls.

Now I really don’t like to do more than I have to; one of life’s natural slackers perhaps. I thought for a moment and proceeded to jog sedately to the corner of the gym where I touched two walls at once, ambled to the opposite corner, touched the last two walls and returned leisurely to the centre of the gym arriving way before the speediest of my peers.

I had singled myself out to staff and pupils alike as too-bloody-clever-for-his-own-good.
(Rich T has a clever and witty sig, Fri 31 Mar 2006, 16:53, Reply)