While watching one of my son’s basketball games the other day in a cramped elementary school gym I was pleased to see this particular gym had not one, but two climbing ropes hanging from its ceiling. In our safety conscious, wrap our children in bubble wrap society, I had assumed all climbing ropes had been removed from gymnasiums and sold to tugboat operators. After all they do present an opportunity for a child to fail and we can’t have that.

As an athletic trainer one of my duties is to prevent injury as much as possible and as a result, I am pretty adept at spotting potentially painful situations. So, looking back at elementary gym class through the eyes of an athletic trainer I have come to the conclusion our gym teachers were under contract from the government to speed up natural selection. No one ever died, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Gym class was little dangerous and a lot of fun…for some of us. Some could shimmy up the rope like a ring-tailed lemur, slap the beam it was attached to, and shimmy back down without incident. Of course some couldn’t, and as hard as they tried their butt never lifted off the big knot at the bottom of the rope. Face red, veins bulging, teeth gritted, arms quivering and that was just the gym teacher trying to help them.

The gym teacher, not wanting the climbing impaired child to leave with nothing, would then give the kid a big arcing spinning push. Over the top of their classmates, they would sail causing a variety of reactions from the kid seated on the knot. Some would laugh and smile and look down wide eyed at all of their classmates as they swooped over their heads.

Even as a 9-year-old you can tell when someone’s having fun or they’re simply terrified to the point of tears and other bodily leakage. We all like to play in the rain but not in the gym while seated under a terrified tot on a knot that is more concerned with holding on than holding it. No child was left below.

Let’s not forget the most thrilling and cringe worthy attempts at climbing the rope in gym class. Those who mustered every bit of strength they had and focused so intently on the ascent that they forgot about the other part of rope climbing…descending.

Climbing a rope is not like giving everything you’ve got to finish a running race where you reach the end and coast to stop. Some tried to coast to a stop after slapping the beam triumphantly. A coasting rope descent generally doesn’t turn out well.

Not much makes you cringe when you’re nine years old but watching someone slide down a rope and bounce off the knot will do it. You feel bad for the kid as they lay there torn between clutching their burning hands or their smoldering corduroys. You feel so bad you laugh…a lot…so much in fact you’re thankful that you wore dark pants.

I don’t know if climbing the rope in gym class held any educational value, but it is reflective of life. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s painful, and sometimes the knot that was your friend today can be a pain in the butt tomorrow.