Over Christmas break, I was reminiscing with some of my friends about high school. We talked about the good times and, of course, we laughed about prom and some of our old classes. Naturally, some of the bad times came up as well and although I could compare a decent amount of my time in high school to time that was spent in Azkaban, several of the horrible memories that I have revolve around dodgeball.

I’ve had some good times playing intramural sports. That means that I was playing for fun. I was consistently on the recreational teams that are trying to enjoy themselves. I have no interest in competition or fierce athleticism of any kind. I don’t even really like watching sports. I do not like to run. Gym class was never going to be something that I enjoyed and I know that I’m not necessarily voicing an unpopular opinion when I say that. There are plenty of other kids who didn’t like sports and, to make everything worse, you had to wear those horrendous high school gym uniforms. Even the kids who liked gym did not like those uniforms.

I can see the value in playing sports and I understand that they are just not something that I personally enjoy. But dodgeball is absolutely barbaric and blatantly humiliating. I see no value in it whatsoever and I don’t understand how or why it’s still played in schools today.

I still remember very clearly how dodgeball went in my sophomore year of high school. I was standing there in my degrading little uniform. I was attempting to stay out of everybody’s way until our teacher dismissed us to go change into our normal clothes. There were kids on both teams screaming vulgarities at each other while the gym teacher sat placidly by and cheered them on. I was annoyed by all of this, but, overall, I just wanted this experience to be over with. Then, before I even knew what had happened, a ball smacked me right in the face.

It’s sort of funny, I suppose. I wasn’t fatally wounded and I lived to see more dodgeball games. But, looking at the big picture, I don’t think that I, or anyone, should be put into that position. In dodgeball, the objective is to hit people with a ball. You are throwing an object at another human. What does one gain from that? It seems churlish. I know, it’s supposed to be fun and people aren’t supposed to throw it very hard. You’re also supposed to be out if you hit someone in the head. But kids do throw it hard and they aim for your head anyway with little, if any, consequences and, for a lot of kids, it is not fun.

There is nothing to be learned from having those strange foam balls chucked at your head. In soccer, basketball, or a few other games that I remember playing in gym, at least you have to work as a team with others who you wouldn’t normally work with to achieve something. But in dodgeball, you are just trying to hit people. I guess there are teams, but in the end, it’s every person on their own.

It’s wrong to stick people who are at the peak of their physical health, and have been playing sports since they left the womb, in a room with people like me who like to sit and who have absolutely no interest in sweating at all, let alone sweating while throwing little spheres of humiliation at another human. It’s not fair. Yeah, life isn’t fair or whatever--I get that. If this were math class, which I also hate, then we’d have a different argument about how necessary it is and how it’s okay for some kids to be better in it than others. But what dodgeball does is it gives the athletic kids a chance to pick on the less athletic ones and I don’t think that less athletic children should be subjected to that.

How did I feel when I got slapped in the face? How did class go for me after that? I’d love to tell you that I got a hug and that everything was fine, but no. I was laughed at with no help from my teacher. It’s lucky that this was only a one-time occurrence for me. Some kids are targeted and this is their every gym class. High school is hard enough, no matter how good of an experience you have in it. You’re learning a decent amount of adult responsibilities for the first time, starting to think about your future, and, more often than not, dealing with heartbreak for the first time. So I can’t imagine it for the kids who have to deal with that barbaric waste of time on top of all of that. No one should have to be publicly humiliated, especially repeatedly, for a grade. We shouldn’t throw things at other people. We should not, under any circumstances, make gym class worse than it already is for the kids who aren’t as athletically gifted as others.