Hesketh Fletcher Gym Team

Hello Daniel, That sounds a pretty rough year. Thanks for explaining.

Hi Joanne,
No problem with answering your questions. Yes the teachers always picked the teams and decided which boys did the lesson as skins. As regards the teacher I mentioned before, having got on his wrong side straight away and shown I was reluctant to take my t-shirt off I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that he kept picking me to be a skin. He was that sort of character! That year I definitely found myself doing PE without a t-shirt more often than most other boys in the class and I suppose I got more used to it, but that's not the same as saying I didn't mind.
And yes I was allowed a vest for cross country and track athletics in the summer.
Stuart J - although it sounds as though we had quite different physiques, our PE teachers were clearly very similar in their general approach. Not nice to be on the receiving end of that, especially your teacher making you a skin when there was absolutely no practical reason for it.

To Adam & Daniel.

I had a similarish problem to the both of you as a boy in PE. I was constantly made to remove my top in PE which I disliked doing because I thought I was too thin. This view of myself was compounded by a PE teacher who told me I looked like I needed to eat a few good meals and toughen up. I thought he used going shirtless against me in order to show me up on purpose because I would frequently find I was in the group of people, often a small minority who were ordered to go skins and it wasn't always just for a team game either. I remember I started measuring my biceps and chest and waist for any sign I was getting a little less thin, and weighed myself hoping to put on a few pounds and was always thrilled when I had done so, but it always fell back off again. I was five foot eight tall and just over eight stone when I was fifteen. This took place when I was at school at the end of thee eighties and beginning of the nineties.

Hello Daniel, hope you don't mind me asking I'm curious. Were your skins teams picked by the teachers, did you find you were picked to strip off more than others in your group. and were you allowed to wear a vest for some activities.

So sorry you had such an unpleasant experience, Adam. No excuse for your teachers to behave in that way and trivialise something which you were understandably sensitive and self conscious about at the time.
I can empathise to an extent, although shirtless PE wasn't compulsory for every boy at my school in the late 80s the teachers tended to operate a system of shirts or skins more often than not. At around 14-15 I still had a fair bit of puppy fat around my waist and my chest, which made me quite self conscious about taking my t-shirt off.
Like you I asked my PE teacher (politely) at the start of one lesson if I could be allowed to keep it on. Maybe he was just in a foul mood that day, but he seemed to think I was being cheeky. His response was: "Who do you think is running this class? You or me?" He promptly announced I'd be a skin and made me take my t-shirt off there and then, even before he'd chosen the teams so I was the only shirtless boy in the class, which felt humiliating.
For the next three or four PE lessons he made me a skin every time and I hated that, it felt like I was being punished for no reason.

Toby I literally begged my PE teachers, more than one of them, to let me wear a tee-shirt in the school gym in the early 70's because I had a really bad period of upper body acne on my chest, back and shoulders that persisited for a long time. None of them would let me do so, they insisted I was shirtless for it, and not only that but they made light of the condition and how bad it was. Perhaps the worst was being told I should wash more and then it would go away, which had nothing to do with it. I dreaded those lessons which demoralised me no end.

Post previously at 23.40 nothing to do with me.

Whoever you are, is that really the best you can say, why did you even bother.

Nonetheless you opined his outie and stared. Which he probably was aware of?

Yes Toby that is what I meant.

If you are sensitive you notice everything about yourself and magnify it ten times over.

Some can whip their kit off and not care one bit and others immediately overthink what others are seeing them looking like.

Stewart

By "noticeable navel" I'm guessing you mean an outie?

I know what you mean about imperfections. Some of us more sensitive than others?

Toby. My PE teacher would have said what you had there gave you character! My best friend had a quite noticeable navel that I remember seeing for the first time in PE and staring at when I first saw it. But I actually had a small appendix scar and he assured me it gave me character. I hated it. It was always obvious when people were looking at it, and we did just about all gym I remember without tops across the board whole class, irrespective of scars or other bodily imperfections you might not want displayed openly.

Vince - I don't really know about nipple shyness. Going shirtless for me was never an issue in itself.

Josh - you have an outie and nobody commented or teased? To me that feels unusual. Maybe yours wasn't noticeable or they were more common in your school? Mine was just like a flesh coloured marble in a regular innie, so hardly unsightly but evidently noticeable enough to be mentioned.

I think that shirtless nipple shyness is a self conscious thing but never before heard of the belly button one that Toby you say about, that seems very unusual for those of us who have that kind to even see it as something to bother about. Nobody ever mentioned mine at school but I did get a nipple pinched and commented on once in PE, and it hurt a lot too.

Toby I had not really noticed that type of thing before. I think mine looks like the majority. Yours obviously doesn't collect fluff off your clothes! I wonder how many boys really ever noticed what concerned you there, I bet not as many as you think. Do you think nipple shyness is a thing, as Julian asks, I think it might be. I was a bit weird about mine too at one stage.

Vincent - you mean you don't know what a sticky out belly button is? They are less common but didn't know they were that rare!

I'd say it's a thing Julian for some. What does Toby think, as he was bothered by his belly button and that's not something I'd heard of before.

Yeah Toby I get where you're coming from on that but for me it was my nipples. Is nipple shyness a thing in boys or was it just me? Made even worse by someone telling me they thought mine were quite large in a shirtless PE lesson one day. The kind of comment I could never forget and I was already more than sensitive enough taking my top off when I had to.

Justin

For me it was my outie (sticky out belly button) being pointed out which made me very self conscious about my physique when shirts had to come off.

Ross, how could you tell that boy disliked showing his bare feet? I felt the same in school and really disliked being made to go barefoot for PE when it happened but I don't know if that would ever have been apparent in how I behaved but I did make attempts to try and hide my feet as much as I could which isn't exactly easy in a PE situation. So many people don't ever seem to care about it one way or the other, did you?

PE for me was always done with bare feet from primary school, throughout middle school and then in high school. Occasionally if we forget our plimsolls or if we preferred we did outside PE barefoot too and ran the cross country barefoot in winter.

I think because I always had bare feet in PE I was used to showing my bared feet even when girls would be mingling around the halls near the gym and they saw us. I remember one lad that joined our middle school part way through and you could tell he was rather shy and disliked having to walk out the changing rooms barefoot.

I fancied two boys at school when I was 14 and it was the one with the nice looking well kept feet that I chose over the other whose were not. True story. That made me go out with him and later we married, now have been for more than 35 years. I would seem to notice boys feet rather a lot in sports class when we mingled occasionally. I knew a lot of girls who were surprisingly self conscious about their feet being seen, I've no idea how the boys felt, someone else might be able to explain their own on that one.

In response to bare feet for PE. As I have recorded previously, our PR kit was shorts no top and no pants. We did wear the old black plimsolls.
What for me was more uncomfortable was at Scout Camp when in the early morning when the grass was still wet with due the leaders always made us wear our plimsolls without socks. I know the logic was to keep the socks dry for later on in the day but the wet plimsolls always made my feet feel cold. I was always glad when later in the day we could wear socks.
Of course "camp dress" was always shorts no longs allowed but I was used to this from PE at school.

If only we'd had any vests, string or other. Like Stephen, gym was a fully shirtless affair, you bared your chest and showed your muscles and hoped you didn't look too pathetic if you were a skinny thing. We were not allowed to cover up and our feet had to stay bare as well. It made me pay a lot of attention to my body and how I looked and compared myself to the others making me unbelievably self critical about my own physical shape.

Thin white shorts were bad enough. But does anyone remember the string vests and briefs that became fashionable .
with regards to PE for me what I liked most was using the climbing ropes and wall bars. they helped develop upper body strength which I found helpful when trying out rock climbing in the Scouts.

Ivan.

To be honest Ivan I remember white shorts for gym being such poor thin material that any undies would have shown through quite easily anyway but the checking was just the obvious in the changing room as everyone got out of our uniforms into the kit. Nothing more than that, plus we had a place to leave our undies hanging so if they weren't there it was obvious. I also remember in wet weather how the fabric used to cling tight to our behinds and went right up the backside crack. I hated white PE shorts, something darker would have been nicer.

Like you say, PE teachers did wear tracksuit bottoms, but many of mine wore shorts, and I bet they had the undies under theirs. But the one teacher I mentioned often came to class in full suit, shoes and tie, as he also taught another subject and came from that to our PE and couldn't be bothered top change. His belt slipped off and got thrashed against a few boys actually in PE, sometimes quite out the blue and you looked at some unfortunate lad and actually wondered what he'd even done because you hadn't even noticed. One lash and he'd put it back on again. The exact reasons escape me but backchat was one of them and so was being too slow or inattentive. Nothing that serious.

The boys in my latter PE class from 11 until I was 15 were never allowed to wear any kind of shirt in the school gym, shirtless was mandatory along with nothing on our feet. An easy PE kit to remember, just white shorts and a towel each time, we were always told to shower as a whole PE group with each other in water that was often rather cold.

Stephen
Interesting comments re your p e teacher. i distinctly remember our one always wore a track suit. At one point he offered some Fred Peery ones to us for £10 which was quite al lot of money in the mid 60's. I do not think many were bought. My dad so no "too much money" and that was that Unlike theses days +borrowing to give your child everything they want.
Like you PE kit was shorts no pants and no top when indoors. However the teacher did not check what we were wearing.
You stated "when we were outside, if it rained and they got quite wet they became rather too see through and obvious."
My question is how did your teacher check when you were indoors. Am I correct in assuming that the shorts were so thin(were they white?) so that pants would be visible., if that was the case was any daft enough to flout the rules?
What other misdemeanours caused him to "use his belt?"

The last time I took a PE lesson as a teenager was in 1964. I had one "PE" master, I use the term loosely, who rarely looked the part and spent much of our gym time standing in his suit and tie dishing out the orders and insults while we all slogged about wearing nothing more than shorts without any pants underneath them. He would check that. It didn't take much to get on thew wrong side of the man and if you did he would unfasten his actual belt around his trousers, slide it off and bring you over to him for an instant thrash across the bottom, upper legs or less common both hands. The shorts were so thin he might as well have been on a bare behind and when we were outside, if it rained and they got quite wet they became rather too see through and obvious.

I had one particular PE teacher at upper school called Mr Savage who took us on a regular basis in the sports hall there who would never ever let any of the boys in his own PE lessons wear the school issue kit we brought with us and made each and every single one of us leave the changing room bare chested and go and do the whole of PE like that. None of the other teachers in PE insisted on it except him. The others did the shirts & skins thing now and again but otherwise we wore tee-shirts.

In the end although the school did issue an actual PE uniform list for parents to know about and provide for us, the upshot was that once we got to school and in the changing room it seemed like any individual PE teacher could simply decide for himself how he wished us to look in the lesson, and if we saw we were getting Mr Savage we immediately knew it was no shirts today, bodies on display for him. There were always mixed feelings about it.

The same man also used to be quite handy with the large white plimsoll he kept for use on any miscreants in PE, and used it against all of us one occasion when somebody passed wind loudly and wouldn't own up so he went along every single one of us in class and smacked the plimsoll hard just once against each of our backsides. It stung more than I thought it would. He would also use the same plimsoll to smack down onto both hands held out at other times, once doing this to someone and then immediately expecting him to climb a rope to the ceiling with freshly stinging hands. Savage by name, savage by nature.

He also refused to ever let us shower with fully hot water. It was always very cool, almost cold, whereas other teachers gave us roaring hot water showers at school and let us come and go with our towels to and from them. Mr Savage lined us up along the wall, stark naked, told us to wait like that before counting us in to shower. We had to leave our towel on the hook at our bench rather than bring it with us. If you have ever been in a group of young men who are made to line up like that you will understand how demeaning it feels. I was always convinced he must have been a national service PT instructor before he joined our school and found some of the old ways a bit hard to leave behind.

I was packed off to boarding school when I was 8 and no lesson was ever stopped or moved into the sports hall because of the weather. Our days started with a early morning run or exercise on the yard (Sunday excepted) with everyone stripped to the waist, no exceptions were made for age. The school placed great emphasis on "hardening up" and team games eg football, rugby were played in teams of vests and skins. If it was heavy rain and you were on the vests team that was your misfortune you would keep your vest on regardless. For x-country and "fitness lessons and tests" every lad was made to strip off.

We stayed out in some truly atrocious conditions that I remember. They wouldn't even consider letting you go back in as long as it was safe. We did go in ahead of a bad electrical storm but that was a unique one off in my time at school. It was drilled into us from the start that we'd stay outside in all conditions, infact not just that we'd stay outside but that we'd still actually go outside even if the lesson hadn't yet started and we could see the weather was tipping down and blowing a gale. It didn't really matter because afterwards no matter how drenched and grubby we were we all had little choice but to go to the showers and make ourselves presentable for the next class if we had one. Wet and dirty kit just rolled up tightly into a plastic bag within the actual schoolbag. That was another thing we got told, don't just throw your dirty, sweaty or wet kit direct into your school bag. I hated lumbering wet PE kit around with me all day and a wet shower towel too.