Wechsel - Substitution

Sport in school wasn’t my strong point. Poor coordination skills + dorky glasses + bad hair = the substitute that rarely ever got substituted for anyone. Which was fine by me for the most part, until the resident dodgy PE teacher forcibly made a switch so he could empirically rate my lack-of footual prowess. In the same way he empirically rated my classmates’ porn-career potential by watching them in the shower. Seeing through the ruse and not wanting to end up in the back of his white van, I chose to stay sweaty. Which I did get from the very few occasions some form of football playing took place. So lacking any sort of proficiency, I was sent to my team’s defence and spent most of the time chatting to the goalkeeper. When an opponent headed my way, I just charged at them full-speed, often resulting in free kicks, penalties and minor injuries to their lower body. Clearly this didn’t help me get picked next time round, so chosen last and stuck on the bench was the standard routine each week. Right until we changed to having half of our year doing PE at the same time, and all of a sudden there were others like me - guys who were good at English, science and IT. Fellow nerdy and posturally-awkward little fuckers who couldn’t kick a ball for shit. We were ostracised from the main games, left to our own devices on a small patch of land at the far end of the astroturf. Although being best of the worst I’d instantly been elevated to MVP status, cleaving down semi-disabled kids and programming geeks that were even scrawnier and more socially inept than me just wasn’t as satisfying as hurting the arrogant jock-tossers who had the temerity to be good at sport. While it was fun enough running circles around guys playing on crutches and talking about computer games without fear of ridicule - unless of course you thought that Mario was better than Sonic, in which case you’d rightly be laughed off the pitch - I missed being violent to those who truly deserved it. Eventually, during the last PE lesson of the school year, I managed to get back into the bell-enders game and wasted no time wreaking some long-awaited havoc. Gunning for one guy in particular, a special kind of cretin who’d accused me of bullying him all year when it was really he who simply couldn’t take my sickening comebacks to his lame attempted-insults, I managed to perform an especially grisly sliding tackle that took him out of the game completely. Dragged in front of the head of year I just pleaded lack-of-coordination and poor judgement on everyone else’s behalf for choosing me to play in the skilful kid’s game in the first place. I had the glasses, bad hair and awkward posture to prove it. Checkmate.