Miss Manzetti and the Swamp Thing

Miss Manzetti had been wearing the neckbrace as long as we knew her.

She was our high school gym teacher, and rumor 'round the locker room was, she sported that thing because she was the plaintiff in a big personal injury lawsuit.

We were 15 or 16, at the time-- just old enough to be jaded, and just young enough not to be deterred by a complete and utter lack of facts. So the story went that the injury itself had healed a long time ago-- but Miss Manzetti just never knew when the defense investigators would be checking her out.

The neckbrace, we suspected, was for show.

This, of course, meant that we kids spent a lot of time in gym class:

1. Looking for mysterious people who might be private detectives lurking around the sports areas and...
2. Trying to get Miss Manzetti to turn her head. Making loud noises, startling movements, things like that.

By junior year, though, we were not quite as rigorous in those two particular points as we had been.

Probably because Miss Manzetti seemed to have nerves of steel. And also there were other things to focus on in gym class. Like actually getting to choose our own activities.

Yes, gone were the days of mandatory group fun like square-dancing, gymnastics and the Jane Fonda workout. So with freedom of choice came a newfound love of exercise. Double-dutch, basketball, floor hockey and volleyball entertained us in the winter. And then, as the spring buds popped and the Canada Geese returned to poop on the marching band field-- there was football, and tennis, archery and the eternal favorite, canoeing around on the swampy pond out behind the tennis courts.

And so, I joined with a rag-tag team (because what story is fun if the team is neither rag, nor tag?) of classmates, all of us unusually low in the gym class pecking order. The little group consisted of myself, my friends Raoul and Josette, Jan McNeely of my old Gin Rummy days, and three kids I knew from my lunchtable.

The lunchtable kids were kind to include me at their table. But the overall dining atmosphere most days was not exactly candlelight and roses. They knew each other well-- too well, maybe. So a whole lunch hour could examine the philosophical aspects of who-did-what-to-whom-when, and how much more stupider this one was than that one, and who stunk more.

Usually this last honor was laid at the feet of a girl dubbed, "Smelly Kelly."

So, in lunch and in gym, it was a lot like hanging out with a trio of bickering fishwives. Or possibly the Three Stooges if all of them were Moe. Or if Tweedledee and -Dum had had a long-lost sister, -Duh--- to add into the mix.

Slapping and kicking were used liberally in between verbal assaults.

You may see now why we were not exactly welcomed with opened arms to join teams.

So, tennis was the sport of choice for us one particular semester. And we discovered fairly quickly that, unlike the games of John McEnroe or Chris Everett at the time, tennis need not necessarily be a fast-paced sport.

You see, there was that pond.

Since none of us were actually any good at tennis, a typical set would go...

Volley, volley, volley...

Bang! Hit too hard. Up and over the fence and...

Sploink! Into the swampy pond.

Then after a thorough filleting of the person who hit the ball out, that person would be made to leave the courts, and arrange for whatever kid who was rowing around in Canoeing, to go and fetch the ball.

See, we all knew that was the whole unspoken purpose of Canoeing, anyway-- to recover all of the archery arrows and tennis balls and other equipment and Jimmy Hoffa, that inevitably ended up in the pond.

Then our player would amble back to the court, and we'd begin the process all over again. One set could easily take a full gym period.

Well, this went on day after day. And the inner rage of the lunchtable kids was building. I don't know precisely what the controversy was anymore. I never really wanted to know. I'd had to proclaim myself Switzerland on more than one occasion. It was not mine to fix.

But "Smelly Kelly" was getting very tired of being -Duh in this family of Tweedles. And after a particularly heated back-and-forth between herself and -Dee and -Dum, Kelly finally... inevitably... exploded.

The ball bounced to her. And snatching it from the air in this middle of this argument, she flung it up, swung her racquet and with the shrieking scream of a Valkyrie... Kelly hit that thing using the power of a hundred-thousand men.

The sound of it echoed over the cement courts sending a chill down our collective spines. It sounded like an eagle screeching, going in for the kill.

Other teams stopped what they were doing to see this ball, this poor defenseless yellow-green sphere, vault skyward with blaring, breath-taking speed---

And go whizzing right over Miss Manzetti's head!

Miss Manzetti, who mostly occupied herself with the contents of a clipboard eight hours a day, saw the shadow of doom pass over her.

Perhaps she thought it was meteor coming in to crash. Or a low-flying secret jet. Or The Greatest American Hero. Or nuclear bombs. But it was loud and it was fast and perhaps it was through fear and reflex alone that... well...

She jumped and turned her head upward.

Students gasped and nudged each other. Kelly gaped and dropped her racquet.

Well, from then on, Miss Manzetti's credibility was lost, the reign of her phys ed monarchy over. If she suffered undue pain because of wrenching her neck from Kelly's rocket? Well, we didn't want to know about it. Because Kelly had made her turn her head...

And that was good enough for us.

The Tweedles didn't even make Kelly go and get the ball, so happy were we all with this minor triumph of Kiddom. They volunteered themselves, directing the current canoe-driver to the far, far back of the swamp. And returning with a ball coated with murk and moss and goo, a slick and slimy trophy for Kelly's efforts. We weren't winners, oh no... but still we had won.

For that day, that was just enough.

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The Freshman Gym Class Ho-Down

Pimples, growth spurts, body odor... and square dancing. Such was gym class freshman year.

I don't know what made our school administrators look at the phys ed curriculum and think...

Administrator 1: "You know what these kids should do to get the exercise they need? More skipping! Lots more skipping! Natural for building cardio-strength, and stronger calf muscles."

Administrator 2: "Also more hand-holding. Having to hold hands with another kid so encrusted with nasal mucus you wouldn't even lend him a Number Two pencil is a sure-fire way to forge life-long friendships, peace, harmony, and intra-student extra-curricular involvement."

Administrator 3: "Hmm... Skipping... Hand-holding... Sounds like a critical need for square-dancing, to me! Miss Manzetti-- get a record player and a copy of 'Cotton-Eye Joe', immediately. These kids need to get their do-si-do on!"

When first they told us we would be square-dancing for the next three weeks, they should have realized it was going to be an uphill battle.

This was north-central New Jersey in the 80s, after all. We were city kids. We knew strip malls and rollerskating rinks and movie multiplexes. We listened to heavy metal and rap and pop and Latin rhythms.

Many of our ranks had moved to the area from Puerto Rico or South America. Still more of us from Vietnam and Korea.

As a whole, the closest we even got to country music was Bon Jovi singing, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."

The only square-dancing we'd seen? Snippets of Hee-Haw, and those cartoon hillbillies who wanted to cook Bugs Bunny.

Our gym teacher, Miss Manzetti, had barely set up the record player before we kids had scattered around the far peripheries of the gym into tight, tiny, terrified knots...

Would we get to choose our own partners? Or would it be left up to the Phys Ed Fates, the forces of chance that boded darkly for so many of us year-round?

Because as freshmen, we were only just now beginning to think of a few select members of the opposite sex as anything other than totally repulsive.

We were only just now starting to work some sort of Cootie-Free détante between us-- a few hormonal ambassadors from our ranks here or there willing to step over the gender gaps to peaceful coexistence and possible salivary exchange programs.

You know, because Tommy Evans had a cute smile. Or Michelle Saunders had boobs.

But as for our fellow classmates as a whole, well, mandatory grade-dependent hand-holding was an absolutely outrageous suggestion-- where anyone even half in tune to the social dynamics of Kiddom would gape with abject horror!

Everyone knew Hernando Sierra liked to snap your bra if he got a chance. And Ken Martin called many of us "dog-face" for the last two years. And Nathan Jackson enjoyed putting Bubblicious in our hair. These were slights not easily dismissed-- wounds not readily healed by fiddles!

I thought I had it sewn up at the time, because one of my very bestest friends, Raoul, happened-- through no fault of his own-- to be a boy. The boys, I learned, had similar Cooties Transmission Fears related to many of us girls.

Raoul and I discussed this rapidly and determined that while holding hands was an embarrassing breach of Friend Etiquette-- one of monumental proportions-- we could set it aside for the duration of the square-dancing portion of phys ed.

As long as it was never spoken about in Algebra, or Language Arts or among the woodwinds in band, things would be fine. There, we would go back to mocking each other as normal.

Yes, what happened in gym class, stayed in gym class.

And that's when Miss Manzetti, tired of having to round us up from around the gym like willful cattle, had us form two lines-- girls and boys.

Raoul and I put our plan into action. He was 15 boys back in the line, I the 15th girl. It wasn't easy doing, as I had to maneuver my way past Sandra Haney, a large angry girl with a sugar addiction. But it was done.

Until our cunning plan dissolved. In a wholly unexpected move, Miss Manzetti started matching boys and girls at random.

As a severe, 60-year-old unmarried woman herself, we wondered why she was so big on forcing us together like this. But her set-jaw and thin-lipped expression betrayed no sign of her inner thoughts as she went through our ranks, pairing us two-by-two willy-nilly like some perverse Noah.

I saw Raoul, shoulders sagging, as he got spirited away by Mary Ann Modesto, a great speller but prone to fits of random crying. He gave me a trapped glance from across the room.

I'd have felt pangs of sympathy for him-- but I had bigger problems. My partner was... Arthur Hensen.

Arthur Hensen was a nice kid, and smart, but what he had in kindness and intelligence, he lacked in the hygiene department. His hair hung into his eyes in long greasy strings. He was always sick, but came to school anyway, so he projected a cloud of pestilence and sweat, cough drops and yesterday's Cheez-Doodles. He was tall and stooped, and was the only kid in the freshman class to have facial hair and hairy knuckles.

I'd have been happy to do a group project with Arthur, or invite him to a birthday party. But I didn't really want to hold his hand.

Of course, Arthur was undoubtedly having the same hesitations about me-- the weird girl with the blue nailpolish and long, orange over-permed hair-- like Medusa with a box of Clairol. In my orange gym uniform, I undoubtedly radiated a level of intense color that could burn the retinas. It was no wonder Arthur couldn't look at me. He needed to preserve his eyesight.

Resigning to our fate, we took our places as the record player crackled to life. And with only a few moments of instruction, we tripped over our Reeboks in our first Promenade.

Around and around, we whirled and twirled... turning... hand-shaking... and ducking under human arches.

We passed blurred faces, pale, drawn and wishing-- for the first time in our lives--- that we were being cracked in the back with a dodgeball. Or wheezing around the track. Or untangling our limbs from the Jane Fonda Work-out.

With every Do-si-do... with every Flutterwheel... we realized that it wasn't just each of us... it was all of us. We weren't just the Ugly Betty with the braces, or the Smelly Joe with the stained uniform. No, we were all the same-- the pretty and popular, the dumpy and depressed-- we were all red-faced, stumbling and sickened because of our Squaredance Suffering.

For us, the country violins started playing a tune of mutual empathy.

By the time the record came to a bumping stop, a quiet resignation had fallen over the class. We parted wordless, a nod to our partner here or there, knowing something we hadn't known when it all began.

Sure, most of us still didn't want to touch each other again with a ten-foot cattle prod. But we knew now, we all had what it took to make the grade... to step up... to endure the seemingly impossible... to get through these three weeks until our next giant phys ed humiliation-- which would come in the form of the pommel horse and uneven bars.

And maybe most of us wouldn't be making out with each other under the bleachers any time soon, but maybe we also weren't so different from each other, after all.

We were all in it together. Who imagined cooties weren't life-threatening?

I did get Arthur's cold.

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