xxstream -- housewifery in real time: Presidential Moi

When my daughter’s elementary school has its end-of-year ceremony this week, Fiona won’t be getting the Blue Award. I know this because her gym teacher. Ms. D., told me so.

“What?” I spluttered. “What? Why not? It was the mile wasn’t it?” Ms. D looked at me, made a beeline for her book, and ran a finger down the line. “V-sit,” she said simply.

“V-sit?” I said incredulously. “V-sit? It can’t be the V-sit. She can do a pancake. Check again.” But, it was indeed the V-sit that was Fiona’s personal Waterloo in getting that sweet blue patch for the President’s Challenge Physical Fitness program. Being an innocent first grader, she doesn’t even know about her personal Waterloo or the patch. But I do.

It was only three years ago that, in a half-baked effort to understand exactly what my two older children were exclaiming about each fall and spring as they attempted to be "Blue", I embarked upon a plan to win the President’s Challenge Blue Award for myself. It would be an opportunity for an over-40 athletic challenge vs. 11-year-olds! It would be a lark! It would be good fun! By the time I completed my last curl-up,a mad gleam in my eye, I realized it was more than a simple lark. I had to have the award -- that blue presidential patch that had so eluded me during my own elementary and junior high school career.

Fourteen-year-old Abby was in first grade when she began coming home with stories of her success (or lack thereof) on certain tasks that Ms. D. was asking her to perform in order to score a red (good) or blue (better) fitness badge at the school awards ceremony at the end of the year. I would nod encouragingly when Abby told me her time in the shuttle run – even though I had no idea, exactly, what a shuttle run was. I would commiserate sadly upon learning she had been unable to execute even one pull-up. I would watch with detached curiosity as she ran up and down our driveway the day before the mile run in a first and last ditch effort to “train” for that event, the culminating task on the five-event fitness test schedule.

And I wondered, how would a 40-year-old woman in just barely above average physical shape fare against a group of fifth graders? I needed to find out, despite the fact I couldn’t remember the last time I had run a timed mile or attempted a pull-up from a dead hang. Possibly, I thought with horror, it had been when I undertook these same physical fitness tasks in junior high school.

The first bit of information I wanted to uncover for my hard-core investigation into the inner workings of this “Presidential Challenge Program” was what, exactly, we were talking about. It was hard for me to imagine the president taking time from his busy schedule to determine whether America’s schoolchildren can do pull-ups. But I think the president’s only real involvement is to have his people write stuff like this: “Every little bit of exercise counts, and if you do nothing now, you should walk; if you walk you should run; if you run, you should sprint.”

It was President Eisenhower who established in 1956 the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports after the release of a report detailing the lamentable physical state of America’s youth compared to – yes, it’s still true after almost 50 years – European children. So way back then a bunch of guys got together to brainstorm ways to get the little Americans as fit as their little European counterparts. But it wasn’t until 1969 that President Johnson established the National Presidential Physical Fitness Award and, of course, that’s all we’re interested in here.

That spiffy blue patch (bestowed upon those youth who score at or above the 85th percentile on all five fitness events) with the golden bald eagle seal inspires a covetous fervor, even among the most grossly gross motor skill-challenged children and 40-year-old housewives. But when I strolled into the gym of Rollinsford Grade School in Rollinsford, New Hampshire in the spring of 2005 I did not understand this. I was still operating under the rules of engagement from my last encounter with this physical fitness test, which would have been, say, around 1978. In those days, one was required to skulk around looking bored until one’s name was called to perform a certain task at which point one rolled one’s eyes and expended just the barest smidgen of energy until the next bored person’s name was called. I couldn’t have cared less about the fitness test, nor did I know anyone else who did.

But these 16 kids, they cared. They listened with rapt and nervous attention as Ms.D. outlined the first task and patiently reviewed all of the skills they had been doing in gym that winter to prepare for a day just like this. After introducing me as the final competitor (my fifth grade daughter grinning with prideful delight, not knowing I would become her Blue Award nemesis), the fitness games began with the ineptly named shuttle run, a race against the clock that is designed to measure speed and agility.

Now, neither of these words has ever been used to describe any of my athletic efforts so I just waited apprehensively until I was called to run 30 feet, pick up a block, transport it 30 feet back to the starting line and do this all over again in – if I wanted to get solidly on the road to a blue award – less than 10.5 seconds. I had just got done watching one bigger, athletic girl run it in 9.8 seconds and another small, non-athletic female in 11.3. I was confident, especially since my running mate, Kayla, was the fastest girl in the class.

Ms. D. shouted “Go!” in that gym teacher way and I felt my right knee, the one that had been surgically repaired more than once, protest vaguely. I also saw Kayla pull to a commanding lead, which didn’t bode well for my blue award. When the blocks settled, I had completed the shuttle run in a respectable 10.6: pretty good, but not Blue. This time qualified me for the red award, otherwise known as the National Physical Fitness Award, which is given to youth who reach at least the 50th percentile on all five events of the test. Average, in other words.

“Why are you jogging across the line?” Ms. D. shouted that gym teacher-like way to one girl, whose red score of 10.7 could conceivably have been Blue had she sprinted instead. We all got two chances, in case someone had slipped or been off her game the first round. On my second run, I shaved one-tenth of a second from my time, crossing the line in a disappointing 10.5. But the blue award pressure was off as we headed toward our next challenge, the dreaded and loathed pull-up bar. Almost everyone had qualified for a red/blue award during the shuttle run, but it was this test of upper body strength and endurance – along with the mile run – that inspired paroxysms of fear and self-doubt among Abby’s classmates. I myself, when faced with the prospect of hauling my 135-pound body up and over this evil looking bar that was so far off the ground a ladder was required just to hang from it, sat helplessly as a grim feeling of defeat washed over me. Due to my status as the only 40-year-old 11-year-old in the class, I always got to go last and so I waited as youth after youth sadly mounted the giant ladder, dead hung helplessly from the bar, and became red-faced at the Herculean effort to defy gravity in order to…not really move at all.

Pretty much the only person to perform even one was a boy named Garrett and small, thin girl named Sami who did three and a half. It was all very discouraging. However, I had heard a report, later proven to be true upon a glance at the school physical fitness records chart near Ms. D’s office, that a third grade girl had done 23. Surely, I thought, I should be able to do a one modest pull-up, the minimum number required for the blue award. I grasped the bar, hands placed strategically outside, fingers facing in, so that I could get the muscular boost Ms. D. had recommended via using the triceps rather than biceps to…not really move at all. I swung to the floor in embarrassed defeat like most of my fifth grade compatriots and listened as Ms. D. reviewed with disgust the list of upper body strength-related activities they had been doing in class to prepare for this moment.

But the good news was there were still three events remaining in which we could prove ourselves to Ms. D. and renew her faith in our athletic abilities, thus boosting her own flagging confidence in her abilities as a phys ed teacher. The first of these, the aforementioned V-sit reach, is designed to measure flexibility of the lower back and hamstrings. It was upon the V-Sit board that I got my first glimpse of the “agony" of physical fitness award defeat.

For the V-Sit, students removed their shoes and sat on the floor with legs straddled eight to 12 inches apart against a V-shaped board. With the assistance of Ms. D. in front and several evilly helpful classmates behind, we were to be one by one simultaneously pushed and pulled to the point where our hamstring muscles felt like Sugar Daddies on the brink of the first bite. To be Blue on this task (for this, inexplicably, was still my goal) I needed to reach 6.5 inches beyond my feet. After two impossibly painful practice stretches, Ms. D. pulled and any number of gleeful children happy to inflict pain on a consenting adult pushed as I stretched to 7 inches. Ahhh, sweet, sweet Blue. But Geoffrey was not so lucky. Following his moment on the rack…I mean board, Jeffrey rolled onto his belly and crawled commando-style across the gymnasium floor, tears streaming down his apple red face, toward a quiet corner of the gym.

This minor V-Sit defeat, however, bore little resemblance to the full-scale battlefield-like carnage following the mile run. By far the most anticipated and widely dreaded of the fitness test events, this particular run lived up to its loathsome reputation. It was held on an overcast but humid Monday, and involved more than the usual 16 students from Abby’s class since some 10 extra kids were doing the run for a second time in order to better their times. Before I had a chance to muscle my way to a prime starting spot Ms. D. once again had shouted GO! in that gym teacher way.

I slowly jogged forward and watched, amazed, as a large flock of children sprinted ahead and disappeared around the back of the building. By the time I rounded the same corner, I was even more amazed to see almost the entire pack walking. I slowly jogged by and in my own best gym teacher voice shouted, “Don’t stop, no walking allowed.” I felt lousy with sweat and knotted up insides after the first three laps, but something (the specter of mile runs past?) strengthened my resolve to complete the run in the under nine minute time required for the Blue Award. I was struck by a sudden burst of speed and energy upon experiencing the epiphany that it was this very same mile run that had ruined all my chances for the Blue Award at King Jr. High School in Portland, Maine. I didn’t give a hoot then, but this time I wanted that Presidential Patch and if it meant pounding the pavement past my very own 11-year-old to get it, then, dammit, that’s what I was going to do.

I crossed the finish line fourth in eight minutes and 33 seconds and Ms. D. was very proud of me. I didn’t have long to savor my victory, however, as one-by-one my hot, sweaty, on-the-verge-of-puking competitors crossed the line in need of medical attention. I became nursemaid, 11-year-old physical fitness test participant and concerned mom all at once while Ms. D. tried to finish timing the remaining stragglers, one of whom, a stubborn fourth grader, lodged his protest -- against the run, specifically, and organized athletics in general -- by walking the entire thing.

One boy said his lungs felt like they were splitting open. He was sent to the nurse. Two girls rolling around on the grass, their innards tied up in knots of protest, were also sent up to kindly Mrs. O’Connor. Several children sent their own bad selves to the nurse. By the time I myself went back into the school, I counted no fewer than six children visiting with the school nurse -- all happy but nonetheless seeking the reassurance that they were not going to perish as a result of their physical exertions during the mile run.

The last event, curl-ups, was a letdown after the exertion of the mile run. Aside from a scary moment wherein Chloe appeared on the verge of neck injury, we all managed to pull off a goodly number of these sit-ups in the allotted minute. Still, I can safely call curl-ups -- alone among the five fitness test tasks -- a relic of athletic abominations past. Fitness experts learned long ago that humans needn't suffer whiplash in the interest of proving core strength.

In the end I had received Blue scores on three of the five events. Alas, I had come up empty in my last, great, Herculean quest for the Blue Award. Ms. D., espying my hunched shoulders and otherwise dejected mien, took pity and offered an intringuing possibility: I was to report to the gym of RGS shortly before dismissal one day and was to be given another chance upon the pull-up bar, along with several other students who had been unable to hoist themselves up and over the bar the bona fide way.

This time we were to perform the feat as the “flexed-arm hang.” We were to be given a boost over the bar and were to hold ourselves there for at least 21 seconds. I myself managed 24 seconds and worriedly asked Ms. D. about my red score in the shuttle run, whereupon she recruited 11-year-old Casey to run against me so I could better that result too. I had no sooner crossed the finish line, with a just barely Blue time of 10.2, than Ms. D. was vigorously pointing at me and celebrating me as “Presidential” to anyone in the vicinity who might listen.

On one later occasion, she even accosted the school custodian with news of my Presidential-ness; he didn’t seem that impressed. I received, following the annual end-of-year awards ceremony, the coveted patch and a bumper sticker that reads “I am the Proud Parent of a Presidential Physical Fitness Award Winner.” My glee was tempered slightly by a niggling voice that suggested my award was undeserved on account of the fact that I didn’t truly perform the pull-up. Ms. D. was just being nice to me.

Whatever. The ego boost of discovering shortly after my 40th birthday that I could be as almost “Presidential” physically as the average energetic 11-year-old child made up for any lingering doubts I may have harbored about my claim to the Blue Award. I sent the bumper sticker to my mom in Michigan.

The summer following my spring fitness success I was taking my nightly vitamins when Abby, having read about athletes on steroids asked me, “Mom, are those steroids?” I assured her they were not and asked in reply, “Why would I be taking steroids?” “So you can pass the physical fitness test?” she asked seriously. I assured her that I did not need any help from steroids to pass the test.

Now, of course, there's the Fiona problem. Blissfully unaware of what her indolence upon the V-sit rack has wrought, I've decided to enhance her performance next year via a couple undetectable doses of anabolic steroids in her Juicy Juice.

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