My Year in the Middle

Everybody in gym class is talking. We’re like a chicken house with thirty biddies going cheep-cheep-cheep all at once. It’s Monday, April 20, 1970-a fine, sunny afternoon in Red Grove, Alabama. We’ve just finished six weeks of volleyball, and everybody thinks we’re coasting easy to the end of school.
But with three short blasts of her mighty whistle, Mrs. Underwood, who’s feared and famous for push-up marathons and killer jump-rope sessions, calls for quiet.
“Y’all hush your yakking and listen up. We’re doing some- thing new today.” She plants her feet in a wide stance and crosses those beefy arms of hers. You can feel it; she’s about to drop a bomb. She’s got that saucy look on her face that you might see on a tomcat circling a canary’s cage. “Girls, there’s six weeks left till Field Day, when busloads of whippersnappers from County show up for competitions. Time to get y’all good and ready.” A murmur starts up. County is a bigger school than ours, and it’s full of toughies, or so we hear. “That’s why today you’ll run the whole kit and caboodle.” She waves her paw in the shape of the driveway we’re standing on, which circles Red Grove Elementary and the high school. It’s about a bazillion times farther than we’ve ever run before.
There’s a second of stunned silence.
“Y’all got that or do you need me to spell it?”
The class erupts.
“All the way around? You can’t be serious!”
“Indeed I am,” she says.
“But that’s too far!”
“Too far?” she hoots. “You lazy sheilas wouldn’t know
‘far’ if it walked up on legs.”
“But I’m not running at Field Day,” one girl says. “I’m doing Hula-Hoops!”

“I’m doing horseshoes,” somebody else says.
“Wheelbarrow races,” another girl whines.
The biddies are all atwitter. Mrs. Underwood blasts the whistle and yells, “Shaddup!” Everybody gets quiet. She whips off her sunglasses and stares us down. She’s solid built. Her shorts come down to the tops of her muscular knees. She wears a floppy fisherman’s hat without the fish lures and a safari-style shirt with pockets everywhere. She’s a sight.