Played on one of those awful "school record players"



Aaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh.... The thing that drove me nuts was the number of my classmates who LOVED that song and would sing along with it to jumping jacks, squat thrusts, run in place.... gaaaaah.

For whatever reason, I have never, and this is not for lack of trying since the age of four, been able to stand and touch my toes. A progression of gym teachers regularly caused me tortuous pain by being convinced that I wasn't "trying hard enough". I am, and was, in good physical condition, but flexibility simply has never been my strong suit. Just hearing the song again makes my hamstrings sore.

Windmills - remember windmills? Aaaaaaaghhhhhh..... Look, when I was that age, I'd be happy to do push ups all day long, but please, no toe touching.

Not just composed by Meredith Willson, but performed by Robert Preston, who also played Harold Hill in the film version of Meredith Willson's "Music Man" (which role I ended up playing as a senior in high school, simply as karmic revenge for hating this song so much).

"Push up, every morning, 10 TIMES!" Like it was yesterday...

I remember singing to it while we did it. I also enjoyed looking at the charts of how many of each exercise you did.

Was why did the President of the God-Damned United Fucking States of America want to know how many pull-ups I could do?

Crazy thing was that my insane gym teacher did not believe my self-reported number of pull-ups, decided I was lying to her, and made a big deal to the class that I was lying and she was going to make me go back to the bar to do pull-ups. While she was watching, along with everyone who was now entertained by the spectacle, I exceeded the number I first reported to her, got off the bar and she was actually more pissed off with me after showing her I could do that many, than when she thought I was lying about it.

She was into humiliating kids in a big way, and the only thing that really got to her were kids who refused to be humiliated.

But they kept that "President's Council on Physical Fitness" through several administrations, and eventually I REALLY couldn't figure out why Richard Nixon wanted to be sure we could do sit ups.

a sadist of a PE teacher in 7th grade who used to play that.

I found it massively insulting, both to me and to chickens.

They played it over the intercom every morning in elementary school. That was the routine. That thing came on and we had to do the exercises next to our desks. I got a chuckle to hear it play during a recent episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I hadn't heard it since the mid-60s but amazingly I sure knew the words when that came on.