Words for Friends | 7.27.17

Kyle Gunby
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Foreword | South Middle Gym Stories (Ryne)

What is your expertise? I’m often confounded by this question when I listen to scholars.

“You see, James Wilson’s Socio-Libertarianism was the real driving force behind the Constitution.”

It’s baffling to hear someone pull such detail from the top of their brain and swiftly offer it to a crowd.

For months, I’ve been trying to write with similar certainty, and it’s been a struggle to commit to my ideas and articulation of them. As I’ve put it, I feel full of concrete.

In taking the time to process my muck, I remembered two pieces I’d written last fall—odes to my dear friends, Jake Wallach and Clint Cannon. It quickly struck me…

Whereas I’m full of uncertainty about myself — at least in this stage of my life—I assuredly love my friends. So, prostrated, I begged them for things to write about—topics, stories, recollections, etc.—and they delivered, en masse.

So, over the next few months, I will be writing about my friends and their interests. Some pieces will be posted here. More personal anecdotes will be mailed or otherwise sent directly. I will do my best to churn up happy and sad stories, educated opinions and uneducated musings.

Sometimes the only thing you know is that someone else knows better than you.

And if that isn’t the most *eye-roll* sentence you’ve ever read, then I’m sure you’ll read it in pieces to come.

The following is my first. Thank you for following me this far down the page.


This blurb is for Ryne Sandler, a friend from my elementary/middle school days and the first respondent. He asked for a piece on “Parkway South Middle School Gym Class.” Hope you’re doing well, Ryne.

You now know that I went to Parkway South Middle School. It’s a rather dour looking building, visible from the highway in the same manner as a detention facility.

Furthermore, it’s a graveyard for boys with rock-hard hamstrings. (I pity the pervert.)

I’m not here to suggest that gym class wasn’t about hotties and riffraff, it mostly was. That was also true of eating lunch, learning multiplication and physically morphing into a leaky pore. But gym class, in particular, posed a question unlike any other:

“Why do I suck at the sit and reach?”

It couldn’t be scoliosis. After all, a 19th-century woman had measured my spine with a ruler. Empirical!

Maybe it was long leg bones. Do others in the 46th percentile struggle to touch their toes?

I struggled to conclude that it may be due to athleticism. At 13, everyone’s an exceptional athlete, some kids are just growing faster than the others. Only come 18 are you a finished product—when your dad gets to choose whether or not to keep you.

The first question begged another: “Why is the president testing my body?”

This was, indeed, some bullshit. I was young, but I knew President Bush wasn’t running the mile in 7:00 flat. And what were these pull-ups? I was told to use bootstraps, not a metal bar.

The whole operation rang hollow—The Presidential Fitness Test. William Howard Taft wouldn’t have passed. William Henry Harrison wouldn’t have survived its duration. Was Bush even fit to lead?

Sadly, I never would have (most of) my questions answered. (Bush wasn’t.) But, from time to time, I still think about my middling results.

Albeit a little less than the hotties and riffraff.

-Kyle

Kyle Gunby

Written by

Copywriter | Awful Babysitter

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