Actually, contrary to the first title of this node, we were not fat. Not all of us anyway.
Who is "us?" you may ask.
I'll tell you.

During the 1999-2000 school year at Dreher High School, I had to take Gym. Basketball/Weightlifting, to be exact. Since I was obviously not going to fit in with the jocks or the ghetto kids, I had to find my own place outside of these two groups. And I did.

There was Jesse, the Ragin’ Pagan. I had known Jesse since I was in the 3rd grade and at one point in middle school I was even in a really bad band with him. It was a stroke of fate that we got a class together. Jesse was a Druid, and worshiped Nature, if I am not mistaken. He is also an ovo-lacto-vegetarian, which means that he eats dairy and eggs, but no animal flesh. He also kept himself free of drugs, including alcohol and acetaminophen, commonly known as aspirin. That’s right, he wouldn’t take aspirin. I could see where he was coming from, though. While we would make our piddling attempts at the mile run, he would tell me about his beliefs, like that Nature was a balance, and that Modern Man had destroyed that balance by pollution and modern medicine, which Jesse blamed for the population explosion. During the months that we were in that class, he played a computer role-playing game called EverQuest. He played it a lot. In fact, some of us were worried that he might be addicted to it. But, this summer (that of 2000), in an unprecedented act of self-control, he completely quit EverQuest. I was impressed when he told me this. He now is completely off the game now. Jesse is a semi-computer nerd. He was the first to introduce me to MP3’s. He liked Phish and They Might Be Giants. His father is a locally famous artist with a gallery in the hip business district of Columbia, SC.

There was Caleb, the Stormin’ Mormon. Yep, we had an honest-to-goodness Mormon priest of the Aaronic order in our gym class. Caleb was a band geek. As far as I know, he was writing a musical suite based on the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. He played part of it for me one day. It was the first movement, I think. I think it was called “Peter and Aslan” or something along those lines. Anyway, he brought his Quad to school sometimes. The Quad is an informal term for the Mormon scriptures: The King James Bible, The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrines and Covenants. We would sit around and read it. Caleb was one of the fat ones, just so you know. Caleb was a senior, and after graduation, he was supposed to go on a mission and spread the Mormon message. The last I heard, he was in Scotland, or maybe somewhere else in Europe . . . I could be wrong.

There was Ian, the Fake Buddhist. I say he was fake because he said he was a Buddhist, and made quite a big deal out of it (much like the God Squad do with their Christianity) but did very few deeds to back those claims up (again much like the God Squad). For example, we had a test in gym and Ian was writing the answers on his hand. I inquired about this, asking what Buddha would want him to do. This was done with no sarcasm or harassment at all. I simply wanted to see how he would justify his dishonest actions with his religion. His reply was that “Buddha didn’t tell me not to cheat on this particular test.” Well, we never let him live that down. Also, he was prone to fits of rage. He listened to really bad music (in my opinion) like Korn and Limp Bizkit and the like. He was the other fat guy.

There was Davie, the Atheist. His father was a Presbyterian minister. Davie used drugs. He had funny hair and was really really skinny. When Davie and I were paired up to play basketball together, we would always end up playing Moshketball, a game of our own creation. It was a lot like basketball, except that you could foul and run into the other person anytime you wanted. Davie worked at Sounds Familiar, a record store. Davie had a steel rod in his spine, which prevented him from doing many of the activities that we had to do in gym class. For a few months I had not a clue what had happened to Davie after his graduation, and I was kinda worried. Worried that he would kill himself with LSD or something. Hey, I know that can’t happen . . . I didn’t say that was a rational fear. Anyway, I hear he is off of all drugs except marijuana. Hey, it’s a start.

There was me, Ben the Bible Belt Baptist. I was (almost) always the one taking the unpopular side of the argument (along with Caleb). I listen to a lot of different kinds of music. I read a lot. I wear jackets in the summer. I live in Conway, near Myrtle Beach. I think I should stop talking about myself.

There were the Two Joes. We occasionally had some contact with them. It’s not like they were friends or anything. They didn’t hang around each other. They didn’t hate each other, either. Joe B. was nondescript to the extreme. Joe K. was a liberal Christian that got along with everybody. And I mean everybody.

So these are the memories that I have for gym class. I will carry these with me until I get senile.

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