Dude, for some grade-school kids in Minnesota, gym class is about to get a lot more, uh, gnarly (is that a word the kids still use?). That’s because Hayes Elementary School in the town of Fridley has added skateboarding to its P.E. curriculum. Yet another reason that I was born 20 years too soon.

(”But mom, this IS my homework!”)

When I was in grade school, we had an entire unit on square dancing in P.E. class. Which was not only completely outdated then (and this was like 1985), but also was an emotional nightmare because the teacher let the boys pick which girl we wanted to dance with — meaning that the cute girls were immediately surrounded by all the guys (there was lots of shoving and yelling) while the rest of the girls had their self-esteem shattered in ways from which they probably still haven’t fully recovered.

Skateboarding is a much better idea (although, unfortunately I was better at square dancing than I’ve ever been at skateboarding). And it’s sort of an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality that prompted the idea.

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I don’t want to get an entire battle of the sexes started here, but while there are plenty of things women can do just as well as a man, there are still plenty of examples where they can’t.   It works both ways as well, because there are just as many things men can’t do as well as women, for example, we men haven’t quite mastered that whole giving birth thing.   One of the things women can’t do as well as their male counterparts is play football, at least, they can’t play with men.

The sport is just way too violent for females to try and compete with men.   I thought this was a pretty obvious fact of life, but apparently I give other people way too much credit.   For instance, there’s this gym coach in Queens that thinks all the kids in his gym class should play tackle football with each other.   With no pads.   On concrete.  Maybe a lawsuit will help change his mind?

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