The Flexed-Arm Hang

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This article was published 26/12/2015 (3657 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sixty-three seconds.

I needed 63 seconds.

I had to have them.

“Ano.”

My turn.

Our physical education class was clustered in a corner of the Nordale gymnasium where the chin-up bar was located. Today, we took turns completing the last activity of the Canada Fitness Test, a government-imposed torture that was supposed to test our physical fitness.

The initiative was concocted by overweight politicians shocked about that commercial with the 60-year-old Swede being in better shape than the 30-year-old Canadian.

Every kid in Canada had to complete the 50-yard run, the 300-yard run, the shuttle run, speed sit-ups, the standing long jump and my nemesis today: the dreaded flexed-arm hang.

Mr. Klatt glared at me. “Today?” He had a lot of people to move through his fitness factory.

Mr. Klatt, our physical education teacher, has a left hand with only a pinky and a thumb. We didn’t dare ask him what happened to his fingers. His crab-like hand, bushy-droopy moustache and Beatles-style haircut elevated him to pirate status. We knew not to mess with him.

How the man demonstrated the flexed-arm hang with basically one hand and hung there for so long remains one of the wonders of my childhood.

The Canada Fitness Test offered embroidered badges for different levels of overall achievement in the six events. There was excellence for the elite athletes, gold for the very good, silver for the hard-working achievers, bronze for the one-step-beyond-useless types.

Anyone who said “present” during gym class roll automatically got the ParticipAction certificate, a distinction reserved for the useless rabble that had a pulse but not much else. The leftovers generally stumbled into the bronze distinction, a symbol of hovering just above a vegetative state. I was a lifetime member of this sect.

But today, I had an unusual opportunity to rise above my social caste.

Sixty-three seconds in the flexed-arm hang would get me a silver.

I slowly stood and up and met Mr. Klatt’s impatient eyes. Keyhole, my brainy friend, sat beside me.

“Hey, you can do it,” he whispered, looking up at me, cognizant of my need to keep my desire secret.

Keyhole was my default friend, mostly because we had no choice but to hang out with one another. He was the school brain, the type who wouldn’t find success until later on in life, when he earned high marks in university and got a great job. For now, though, he was a ParticipAction type who might fall into a bronze with a bit of luck.

We were drawn to one another because we both lived on the same block on Lawndale Street, and we went to the same church on Sunday. We also shared an intuitive understanding about our roles as perpetual underdogs on the playgrounds of Nordale School in Norwood.

The class had just witnessed Gus stare at the bar for 172 seconds and only end his time because he looked bored. I would look nothing but pathetic following the school’s best athlete, a star AAA hockey player.

I stepped before the bar, stretched up my arms and placed my hands carefully on the chrome rod. I looked to the left at my classmates, who were sitting, mostly cross-legged on the ground, oblivious to me. I was no Gus. They could not hope to expect anything similar to his herculean feat.

My peripheral vision caught Lisa twirling her shoulder-length light brown hair around her index finger. She turned to Charlene and said something. They giggled, probably talking about my ridiculous shorts, yellow with white piping, and my portly Italian body.

“Go.” Almost simultaneously, the stopwatch clicked.

I lifted myself slowly, stealing a second from the clock. Now, I simply stared, eye-level with the bar.

For the past two days, I secretly practised in my dad’s rec room with his homemade chin-up bar nailed between two ceiling joists.

“Ten seconds.”

So far, so good. I held myself true to the bar.

“Twenty seconds.”

My forearms began to tremble. Nondescript veins began to show themselves. Insurgent muscles began a coup d’état in my body.

“Thirty seconds.” My arms were shaking, my eyes wide as saucers. My shoulders began to dip.

“Hold on, Ano.” Steve-o, the de facto leader of the class, often offered me encouragement. He was the first person I met when I arrived in Norwood that past September. He had an unusual kindness and empathy for others that amazed me. He always seemed to be in my corner, even though we lived in different worlds on the schoolyard.

“Forty seconds.”

Mr. Klatt, for the first time, looked up from his stopwatch. He appeared dumbfounded by what he was witnessing. “Holy cow,” he muttered inaudibly.

Forty-five seconds. The trembling confined itself for the moment to my upper body, which resembled a seismic tremor, shaking now uncontrollably.

Fifty seconds. My legs started to wriggle to and fro. The class began to take more than a passing interest in this Flying Yolanda at the bar.

Fifty-five seconds. When would 63 come?

I so wanted this ordeal to end.

My fingers and knuckles, white with tension, re-gripped and re-grasped the bar, trying to hang on. My entire body twisted, attempting to climb the air beneath my legs, but with no leverage or anchor on which to ascend. The Three Stooges had invaded my entire body.

Some onlookers became fascinated with the drama at the bar; others chuckled at the unusual contortion of limbs and will; some paid no attention.

“60 seconds,” yelled Keyhole. He bolted up without thinking, fists clenched, mouth agape.

All eyes quickly turned to Keyhole’s abrupt, uncharacteristic movement. This was not his style. The class collectively leaned towards the fat Italian kid hanging on for dear life.

“He looks like a monkey up there,” said Kim, with cool-girl derision.

I began to make stuttering, grunting sounds as I struggled to keep afloat.

“Sounds like he’s on the toilet,” said Zap, breaking into his signature raucous laugh. He was the other Italian kid in the class, and was also the class bully.

Our gym corner filled with staggered laughter.

Then, very suddenly, my left index finger gave in, others snowballed off the bar, and I fell to the ground.

My feet touched down quickly, and my knees buckled. I stared at the hardwood floor, exhaling hard. I think I held my breath for the entire time I was on that bar.

Mr. Klatt looked at his stopwatch and quietly, incredulously, stated, “64 seconds” amid the ebbing laughter.

“Didn’t know you had it in you.” Gus stood on his tippytoes behind Mr. Klatt and glanced quickly at the stopwatch.

Drope, the school and city soccer star, was also impressed. “How did you hold up that body for so long?”

Another chuckle snaked through the group. Drope was an entertainer.

I looked up. Appropriately, I fell back into my comfortable role as one of the useless rabble, an easy target for teasing. I fell back to earth with a thud.

I was so close.

“That was unexpected,” said Billy, the small and confident braggart of the class. He was the school’s best basketball player even though he was under five feet.

More chuckles. The group smelled blood, picking at my open wound. It was our way.

I ignored the laughter.

Wait.

I turned toward Klatt. What did he say? My head darted upward to his.

“Mr. Klatt, what was my score?”

“64 seconds.” He flipped a page on his clipboard, not comprehending the magnitude of the remark. “All right, Danny, you’re next.” Like a mill.

I found Keyhole’s face. He was smiling. I was silver. I was silver.

I sat down beside him, and he slapped me clumsily on the back, almost missing.

“That was exciting.” He shook his head with such a genuine glee that I felt guilty about my real motive.

My cheerleader would never know that I loathed to be in his world; my small achievement today separated us. I turned to Keyhole. I felt a wave of murkiness surge through me, of being true to a supportive friend and sensing a new possibility, one that would always conflict me.

“You looked kinda funny hanging there, but you did it,” he said, still glowing in our shared victory.

I smiled at my friend.

Today, I was silver. And I would do everything I could to stay this way.

 

Adriano Magnifico is an English and Career Development Teacher in Winnipeg. He hopes there is mortadella in heaven.