Slack and Field Day

Yesterday my son Sam had a Bum Day. No, nothing to do with his derriere, other than he spent the whole day sitting on it. With my permission, of course, because yesterday was Track and Field Day at his school and I wouldn't make my worst enemy suffer through Track and Field Day.

It's fine if you're one of the five kids at every school who are actually athletic. For the rest of us, T&FD is exquisite torture. First of all, it is always held on the hottest freaking day of the year. Ninety-five degrees in the shade and, the beauty of T&FD is it's in a FIELD where there is no shade, so the sun just beats down on all the non-athletic, sweating-like-buckets, humiliated-beyond-belief puddles of torture-victim humanity we call schoolchildren.

It's not like we were ever trained for such events. Oh, OK, so maybe we had one session of standing long jump in gym class one day, just enough of a lesson to know you were never, ever, going to jump more than eight inches from the line. That, to me, was the stupidest of the events: stand there and jump. Really? What genius dreamt that up? "Geez, Bob, let's draw a line in the dirt and see who can jump further. Yup, yup, that sounds like fun, yup, yup."

High jump isn't much better. Again with the jumping – what are we, frogs? People are meant to stand on two feet, not leap about like gazelles. Obviously only a few of us are capable of doing that freakish lying on your back in middair thing that gets you across the pole. The rest of us have to deal with the gravity that gloms onto our sweaty backsides and keeps us anchored firmly to the dirt.

And don't even get me started on running races. I could not care less about who can run faster. You can run faster than me? Well, goodie for you. You go right ahead and sweat like a pig and twist your ankle and look smoking-hot-silly in the school gym uniform while all your wobbly bits shake and shudder as you blunder across the finish line – all that so you can get a green Participation ribbon.

I always vowed no child of mine would be forced to endure T&FD.

So Happy Bum Day, Sam.

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Thanks to everyone who has sponsored me in the upcoming Muskoka Novel Marathon.

Ed Boutilier

Linda McLean

Lori Freshwater

Laurita Miller

Amy Severino

Daisy the Curly Cat

Aimee White

I'm nowhere close to my goal and would appreciate any help you can give, even if it's a mention on your own blog. For all the details, click here. To donate, click on the Muskoka Chair over on the top right of my blog. I apologize for being so yappy about this but I think it's a great cause. You're never, ever too old to learn how to read and write.