SCOTT LUDWIG: Adolescent anxieties in freshman P.E.

Anyone who has survived it can tell you that it was one of the hardest things they ever had to endure.

Anyone who is living through it at this very moment is probably wondering if their living hell will ever end.

And for anyone who isn’t at that point in their lives yet — “it” being adolescence — you might want to stop reading right now and turn on the television instead. Trust me.

By definition, adolescence is the period of time following the onset of puberty when a young person develops from a child into an adult. This period of time includes a multitude of changes:

· Physical — acne; excessive muscle and/or weight gain; the growth of hair in places other than on top of one’s head; and the rather obvious presence of body odor — if not properly treated.

· Emotional — determining where being a child ends and becoming an adult begins; rapidly-changing mood swings; self-consciousness in bodily changes; and the first signs of interest in sex.

· Behavioral — independence; risk-taking; peer pressure; dress, hair style, and assorted body accessories; and hanging out with the “wrong crowd.”

Perhaps now would be a good time for all of us to turn on the television, because things are about to get real.

While all of these are terrifying at best, none of them holds a candle to what I experienced as an adolescent many, many years ago: my first class in physical education. For those of you who have been there — and you remember your experience as traumatic — believe me, if you stop reading right now, I completely understand.

Phys ed — or P.E. for short — was a required course in the curriculum when I was in high school. And the first one, during my freshman year, I will always remember it for what it was: a survival of the fittest.

My teacher — we called him “Coach” because he insisted — was pretty much status quo around that time (the early ’70s). He looked exactly the same every Monday through Friday at 1:25 in the afternoon: butch haircut with matching U.S. Marine persona, coach’s shorts, collared Ban-Lon shirt bearing the school colors (purple and white), and an ever-present whistle hanging around his neck that he no doubt wore whether he was coaching, sleeping, or showing interest in the opposite sex.

But all of that is just background information to let you know who was calling the shots. What me and my classmates had to endure in his class is where my tale of terror actually begins.

Our first task was to climb — or at least make an attempt — a knotted rope that hung from the ceiling of the gymnasium. I couldn’t possibly imagine that being a skill anyone would ever need, unless one day they were going to own a gymnasium of their own and occasionally need to replace a light bulb. I never made it above the first knot, and no one in my class ever made it past the third knot (there were eight in all) — which is probably a good thing, because if anyone slipped off the rope, there wasn’t a mat or safety net to land on to break their fall.

The first time we went outside, we were introduced to the standing broad jump. To receive an “A” grade, you had to jump from a standing position as far as you were tall. I failed miserably: I had as much a chance of jumping 6 feet as I did of jumping to Jupiter.

Things digressed from there: the 600-yard run — the running long jump — pushups, sit-ups, and pull-ups — lifting weights. I stunk at every last one of them. The only class I was good in during my freshman year was lunch.

Once the torture for the day was over — Coach referred to them as calisthenics to make them sound more important than any of us believed they actually were — class ended with one last unspeakable horror: the dreaded community shower.

Imagine you’re a 14-year-old boy stepping into a shower — naked — with two-dozen of your classmates during a period that your body was changing in ways you couldn’t possibly have ever imagined. I’ll forgive you if you bail at this point and turn on the television.

I’ll leave you with one last thing that is sure to chill you to the bone. After showering, everyone in class hung their sweaty gym clothes and wet towels in their gym lockers, with the intent of taking them home every Friday afternoon so they could be washed over the weekend. The only problem was we didn’t take them home until Coach insisted we do so — which happened to be only three times all year: before Thanksgiving break, before winter break, and before spring break (he let us slide over Christmas, for some reason).

Most of the students in class did as we were told. Herbert Dean wasn’t one of them.

Before each of those three breaks, Herbert took his sweaty gym clothes and wet towel and simply stashed them in his book locker so they could “air out” — until he got them back out and wore them again in P.E. and returned them to his gym locker once again.

So, if you ever happen to be within a 300-mile radius of Neptune Beach, Fla., and smell a malodorous scent in the air that you think is the salt water from the Atlantic Ocean, you might want to think again. It could be the lingering stench of Herbert Dean’s freshman year.