“Elementary school PE class… wasn’t that just the best?”
If you look back at the long list of things you did when you were in school, I think that PE class in elementary school definitely will rank up there at the top. I know it was for me. It was so awesome! Our PE teacher was so creative in some of the things we did, and always kept things interesting. We occasionally did aerobics on Fridays, rocking to the tunes that we liked as our teacher showed us the routine on the stage. The only rules were that you needed to always be moving, and you could not sit down. My favorite part of that routine was at the end when the song “Easy Going Day” from the movie Follow that Bird (still a favorite of mine) came on. Even at my young age, I knew all the words to the song, and sang along with it. However, as delighted as I was about the song coming on, it was also kinda sad, because that meant that the session was coming to an end, and I loved those aerobics sessions. They left you completely pumped and feeling fine. We also did a big thing every year with Jump Rope for Heart, where we first of all learned how to jump rope (a skill that I still retain to this day), and then once we got the basics down, learned all kinds of tricks, like swinging the rope side to side, making sure not to hit anyone in the process, and then getting back into the regular movement (I got hit in the 
leg with the jump rope a lot trying to do that one, but it’s all in fun), and also something with crossing the rope in front and jumping it. I recall that I couldn’t get the crossing down right, either. But my favorite part of elementary school PE class was by far Pac-Man Scooters. Now in Pac-Man scooters, what you did was you put thirty or however many there were kids on these little floor scooters, which were pretty much a slab of plastic with four wheels on them. Half of the scooters were yellow, meaning that they were “Pac-Man”, and half of them were blue, meaning that they were the “ghosts”. Then our teacher had a sign that she held up that had a picture of Pac-Man on one side and a ghost on the other side, and she’d turn it around from time to time from Pac-Man to ghosts and back again. And depending on which side was out, was who could get who. If the ghost sign was facing out and a person on a blue scooter tagged you, and you were on a yellow scooter, you were “out” for the time being, and had to go over to the sidelines, where you did some kind of exercise like sit-ups or something, and then after that, you were back in the game. Then when the sign got turned around, the roles reversed, and the Pac-Mans went after the ghosts. This was such an awesome game. It was incredibly fun, you got quite the workout doing it, and you didn’t even realize you were working out, and, like the aerobics, were feeling totally pumped after doing it. I haven’t played Pac-Man scooters since the early 90s, and I miss it so much, because it was so fun… what I would do to be able to go back to those days and have elementary school PE class again…
Date posted: July 15, 2002