The "good old days".

[hunter]

12. We had a knotted rope for the weaklings and the girls.

Mind you, the person who could climb the regular ropes fastest in our school was a girl.

If you couldn't climb at least halfway up the knotted rope you were officially a loser, same as if you couldn't do a single pull-up on the bars.

Everyone had to take P.E. unless they had a note from the school nurse for the day, or their doctor for a week or longer.

Some perfectly healthy kids never took P.E. because their parents didn't believe in it and knew doctors who would exempt them.

I was a skinny autistic spectrum klutz, by weight among the smallest kids in class, and my parents insisted P.E. would be good for me. I've got some P.E. horror stories, always being picked last for team competitions was not the worst of it, but yes, physical activity has always been good for me. By the end of seventh grade I could climb the rope.