“One day in gym class, we had a ‘fitness test’ in which we ran laps around the outer perimeter of our school and completed as many laps as possible. Most of us dropped out after a lap or two and went to sit on the bleachers.
There were a bunch of cross-country kids, though, who had taken this as a challenge and were running seemingly endless laps. The not-quite-popular kid figured that if he could keep up with those guys, he’d show that he deserved to be on the team.
Lap after lap, he hung right at the back of their pack, never catching up but never falling completely away, either. The large group of us who had already given up and were sitting on the bleachers saw this, and we all started rooting for this kid and watching closely.
As the pack passed our bleachers on yet another lap, the kid following behind visibly shit his pants. Turds poured from the leg holes of his gym shorts and onto the pavement as we all watched in horror.
He just kept running.
On the next lap, our gym teacher, who fancied himself a drill sergeant, flagged the kid down, chewed his ass, and made him clean up the turds as we all sat there, wishing for an unexpected asteroid strike to put us out of our collective misery.
His popularity never recovered. He never ran a single meter for our cross-country team.”
—u/EarhornJones
