"Gym Class" by Dawn Corrigan (reprise from April 2011)
The students sat in crooked rows on the floor of the gymnasium, dressed in their gym uniforms. The boys wore blue shorts and gold T-shirts. The girls wore one-piece suits consisting of solid blue shorts and a short-sleeved top with narrow blue and white stripes. The striped tops called to mind Handi Wipes, a cleaning cloth product. The gym suits seemed to be made of the same unidentifiable material as the Handi Wipes—lightweight, yet vaguely unpleasant. There was something demeaning about being dressed like a cleaning product, thought the girl who sat in the second spot of the second row of students. Squads, these rows were called. The girl in squad two didn’t like gym. She was myopic and clumsy, and didn’t excel at any of the activities. However, her dislike wasn’t fierce or desperate. Perhaps this was because she spent more time in her head, where her daydreams were vivid and entertaining, than in her body. It would be years before she learned to look at people’s bodies t...