Flashback Friday #121

Co-Education

Greeting my friends and any wayfaring strangers who have wandered into this patch of cyberspace. It's time again for another edition of Flashback Friday. In today's edition, we deal with the dreaded three letter word that starts with "S" and ends with "X"(sort of).

Near the end of my final year in Jr. High (that would be 8th grade), we upperclassmen of said school began a headlong rush into the wonderful world of the opposite s-x. Prior to this time, all gym & Health classes were segregated. During the last four weeks, the classes were intermixed as the school began it's "S-x Education classes. (If you are wondering why I don't spell out s-x, it's to keep this post off the search engines for said word. It's the Internet, people are searching everywhere for it, even in blogposts).

But I digress. S-x education is awkward enough when it is done in a same gender class. It really gets awkward when you have mixed genders in the throws of puberty. We were walking containers of hormones, ready to explode. Hence the school felt it was in our best interest to let us know what was going on in our bodies.

The most awkward was the puberty movies. There was snickering from both sides during the opposite presentation. Maybe they thought that there would be less giggles & comments in a mixed crowd. Whatever the reasoning, it was uncomfortable to a young teen, regardless of gender.

As much as we didn't like the co-ed s-x education courses, we had no problem with the co-ed gym class. We had heard that the girls took gym, and even occasionally found a stray gym outfit, but nobody had ever seen them because we were cloistered in the "Health class trailer" during their gym. Now we got to see them with our own eyes, wearing shorts (shorts were not in the dress code for our school). Those weren't the shorts of today, that come to the knee. Nope, these were the shorts of the late 70's. I don't know how the girls felt about it, but every guy liked it.

Since it was May, if it wasn't raining, we were outside playing flag football, soccer or kickball. If it was rainy, we played basketball, volleyball or dodgeball in the gym. Needless to say, we were on our best behavior because nobody wanted to sit in the office during this class (At least nobody of the male gender).

When you are 13 or 14, this is a weird time of your life. The girl who had cooties just a year or two ago has become an object of admiration. I even grew to the point where I actually liked cooties (and still do).