Pinocchio
As the gym teacher announced the start of our yearly physical fitness tests I squirmed in my seat. I could hold my own in most of the tests: the shuttle-run, the broad jump—being long and lanky was an advantage in speed and conditioning. But pull-ups? The potential for embarrassment was incalculable. I imagined the cute girls watching me struggle and my palms started sweating buckets. To top it off was the way the pull-up tests were conducted—with the entire class forming a semi-circle around the lone bar counting aloud: One!—Two!—and so on as our puny arms trembled and our faces turned red.
When it was my turn I couldn’t even do one. There was so much sweat on my hands that I pretty much just slipped off the bar. The stronger boys, the ones in prematurely advanced states of puberty with their crusty mustaches and acne covered backs snickered and jeered, “Weakling!” and “Faggot!” and all the pretty girls giggled. One of them made a comment about my sweaty hands so I sat on them for the rest of the class so nobody could see.
Next up was a kid named SteveBo. Before beginning he announced to the class that he held the record at East End Elementary for most pull-ups. This was a lie; I went to elementary with SteveBo. In sixth grade he did sixteen, which was two shy of the record still held by some guy named Nicky Means.
SteveBo hit puberty even before the crusty-mustache-name-callers. He probably had hair on his dick in the second grade. Kids at school would ask him to try to buy six-packs down at the corner store for them, but SteveBo was one of those religious kids and adamantly refused.
Early adolescence hit him particularly hard. He was an oddity, a freak show, he stood out in a crowd and, for a kid disfigured with acne boils, attention was not a good thing. There were scraggly patches of whiskers all over his chin, different lengths and sprouting in all sorts of directions. To top it off he had this lazy eye set deep in a Cro-Magnon brow ridge that made him the prime target of ridicule for the crusty-mustache-name-callers. While we changed for gym class in the locker room they would dance around him, arms dangling below their knees, pretending to walk on their knuckles, chirping like monkeys and chanting: “Ugly! Ugly! Monkey Man!” This one time I tried to stick up for him, told them to knock it off, but those guys turned on me and for two weeks I had to put up with their torment. I learned by bitter experience, and after that I just stayed silent.
But the physical fitness tests were the time for SteveBo to shine. He jumped up and effortlessly began pulling his chin above the bar. It was a fluid motion, like a lubricated engine piston, and everyone counted: One!—Two!—Three!
Then I heard gasps, followed by nervous giggles so I turned to the kid next to me and asked: “What’s so funny?”
“Look,” the kid pointed at SteveBo up there pumping away. “He has a boner!”
I looked. There it was, a little bulge inside his gym shorts.
Four!—Five!—Six!
The bulge grew. There was no doubt. Nervous giggles erupted into red-faced laughter. A couple guys were laughing so hard they rolled on the dusty gym floor.
It pointed straight at us. The girls put their hands over their eyes with speechless terror.
Ten!—Eleven!—Twelve!
“Woody!” someone yelled.
Thirteen!—Fourteen!—Fifteen!—Sixteen!
We looked at the gym teacher. What would he do? He hesitated, glanced about the class, then looked away.
Seventeen!—Eighteen!
Drop you idiot, I wanted to scream. The laughing stopped, and everyone just stared. Stared the kind of way people do when they come across a massive car wreck with bloody bodies being loaded on gurneys. Half with wonder, half with disgust.
Nineteen—only a few kids still counted.
His arms shook. The bulge in his shorts quivered.
Twenty.
He dropped, stood there for a second, then went and sat cross-legged on the floor with the rest of us. The girls nearest to him shrieked and scooted away.
“Wow! That was almost the pull-up record,” the gym teacher said, composed as ever. He rubbed his nose as if it was growing.
