And My Teachers Always Said, “Running Won’t Kill You…”

I suffer from an unusual breathing condition that forbids me from running more than a hundred metres or so without great discomfort or pain. I can walk with a backpack for kilometres or hit the gym without great problems, but I cannot run or bike. Since I like to hit the gym (and always have), I look a lot more athletic than I am. I am also quite tall and became quite “adult” in my body shape quite early.

My PE teachers throughout school knew this, and due to the great litany of doctors’ notes, I was exempted from most PE. I was supposed to show up and be assigned a different, individual assignment, though. It worked out mostly well for me, apart from one incident.

We were supposed to run two kilometers for a test, and it was required to run the race in order to receive a passing grade. I turned up, but there was a substitute instead of the usual PE teacher. We were given the instructions for the race and the others set off for the run. I naturally stayed to learn what my assignment would be. I was, therefore, last in the run and none of my classmates were around.

Substitute: “Go on, then! Start running now!”

Me: “Oh. Right. Um, I am supposed to be exempt from the running test due to—”

Substitute: “Yeah, right. Start running!”

Me: “But I have this condition called [disease], and…”

Substitute: “Pull the other one! No one is exempt unless they are ill for real! The Board of Education mandates this test, and everyone must run.”

Me: “No, but, listen—”

Substitute: “Do you have a doctor’s note?”

Me: “No, but there should be a note in [School Nurse]’s office, and—”

Substitute: “‘Forgot it’, eh? How convenient. Look, I know the game: everyone thinks the sub is an idiot that can be fooled, but look at you! You obviously play rugby or something. You can run this!”

Me: “No, I really can’t! Please, I—”

Substitute: “I really don’t get why you are being so difficult. Shut up, run the race, and don’t complain, or I’ll write you up! I’ll call your mother and the principal, and it will end with you running! So, you run, and I will fail you if you dare to slow down or start walking!”

He didn’t know this, but I was deathly afraid of upsetting my mother, due to what is now known to be her psychiatric condition. So, I started running.

I don’t remember what happened after the first 800 meters, but I remember my throat burning, my breaths turning into hyperventilations, the taste of blood in my mouth becoming a sort of dry feeling of iron shavings, and my vision blurring.

I woke up to pandemonium. I had, apparently, run the entire course, run across the finish line, and sort of… keeled over from exhaustion and a lack of oxygen. My classmates, who knew about my condition, had realized what had happened and had reacted with the force of an angry mob. An ambulance had been called, the substitute was berated by at least five of my classmates, and the principal, the school nurse, and my head teacher had been fetched.

I didn’t understand a lot of the chaos — I was too starved for breath and mostly worried that I had failed the class — but I was told that the substitute was truly devastated for having forced me to run. I was okay within a couple of days, and he apologized profusely to me when I returned.

From then on, I always had a copy of the doctor’s note, AND a note from the principal explaining my condition, AND a note from my “main” PE teacher with my PE clothes just in case I needed them again. And I actually did need it — twice more, in fact — but the severity of the documentation and my classmates always saved me.

Why I wasn’t just exempt altogether is still a little beyond me.