I received an award for diving while I was in college. It was titled “Highest and Farthest”; I believe I was being mocked.

We had a PE requirement when I was at college at SUNY-Binghamton. I don’t know why, or if they still do at Binghamton University. I’m guessing we had to have a yearly credit for Physical Education, because I remember three classes, and I got credit for playing JV soccer my first year.

I had the one vanilla credit under my belt for continuing a sport I’d been playing for a decade, and since I continued to play intramural football and joined the Outdoors club to hike and rock climb, I had no shortage of ways to stay active. I decided to sample the entire menu when it came to the other classes. I took the aforementioned “Springboard Diving”, one semester of Taekwondo (it might have been Karate), and the most fun was “Running to Awareness”.

In my diving class we learned how to dive off a springboard. The concentration was on combining poise and power on the board, control in the air and ending with a smooth entry into the water. I think we can all agree that the only noun in the previous sentence that I embody might be “power”. What I do best  is energy and enthusiasm, and so while my pike-position was never graceful, my altitude was apparently quite impressive. I am more of a ballistic diver than a precision one. On one particularly memorable day I was attempting a one and a half somersault flip; while I got nowhere near one and a half flips I got very very close to the far edge of the diving pool. At the end of the semester I received the paper certificate from my teacher memorializing the event.

One of the faculty or staff was a black belt in karate, and effectively combined a PE credit with marketing for the dojo of his sensei. I know there’s a difference between Karate and Taekwondo, but I don’t know which one we took.  In yet another class precision body control was the key to proper kata technique performance and so, once again, I was not good (see above). I was, and still am pretty flexible compared to most men, so at least I have that going for me. I got my yellow belt as part of my final exam. Because that class was held in a dance studio on campus, the men and women taking ballet or modern dance in the classes before and after ours were far more impressive than any of us.

By far the most enjoyable of the PE classes I took was “Running to Awareness“, taught by the head track coach on campus. He was a really laid-back hippie type, who combined meditation techniques and running. Twice a week we would get together and run around or off campus.  While there was some physical training, it really was like going for a half-hour jog  with The Dude, from Big Lebowski. It was so much fun, that one of the women (a friend of Jenny Grella Winters) in the class drew a custom T-shirt for it, and we all bought copies.  It is one of the tragic losses of my life but I do not know where that shirt went. That class is also where I met Christie Nolan Papa, who would become the wife of Jim Papa .

One last memory PE memory, but not from one of my classes: my diving instructor also taught a yoga class. Jennifer Goetz-Bixby and Bill Church took the class in the same semester. Jen took it very seriously, and it launched her yoga hobby, which she very well may still be continuing. Bill Church was famous for taking a nap on his yoga mat most classes. I believe they both earned a PE credit.