I Hated High School Gym Class

During my high school days in Southern California (at Centennial High in Compton, to be specific), I was not into sports and lacked athletic ability. In fact, I absolutely hated gym class. For me, spending time in the school library would have been preferable. Whenever it rained I was glad because that meant we didn't have to change into our gym clothes (white T-shirt, blue shorts, white socks, and high-top sneakers). The entire gym period would be spent sitting in the locker room until the next bell rang and we went to our next class. 

Since this was California, it didn't rain much. And on the days when it didn't, I would sometimes decide to skip gym altogether, joining a few other boys walking around the grassy field for an hour until it was time to go to the next class.

If recent storms in California had happened back then, I would have considered those storms a blessing.

Dress Codes Are Not Fashion Fascism

The following is an unpublished letter-to-the-editor that was sent via e-mail to the New York Daily News as well as amNew York, a free daily newspaper.

Voice of the People

New York Daily News

450 West 33rd Street

New York, NY 10001

October 21, 2005

To the Editor:

Re: NBA dress code. To call Commissioner Stern's decision racist or, as [sportswriter] Filip Bondy termed it, an act of "fashion fascism," is utterly ridiculous. What's wrong with looking your best? How can that be interpreted as "attacking cultures," as one of the athletes described it? What is cultured about wearing pants so low that one's underwear shows?

If Joe Louis, Martin Luther King, Nat "King" Cole, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Duke Ellington, and other African-American luminaries had dressed as slovenly and thuggish as some of today's millionaire athletes, no one would have taken them seriously. In fact, the black community would have been ashamed of them for looking like someone's unmade bed.

Sincerely yours,

Charles Michael Smith

Boxing: Artistry Or Savagery?

Letters
Village Voice
842 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
November 26, 1982

Dear Editor:

The corruption that Jack Newfield writes about in his piece on boxing ("The Men Who Are Killing a Noble Sport," November 30 [1982]) is not the only disturbing thing about this so-called "sport." It's also the gladiator mentality that keeps it in existence. I have long advocated for the abolition of boxing and the recent death of the Korean lightweight Duk-Koo Kim underscores that belief. When I heard on the radio that Kim had suffered irreparable brain damage and that he was close to death, it brought to mind Willie Classen who died under similar circumstances about three years ago.To Newfield I ask: Must more lives be lost? Must more families be left behind to grieve before a decision is made to put boxing--which Newfield calls a "noble sport" and I call legalized savagery--to rest?

What baffles me is how Newfield can justify boxing by calling it "artistry." Where is the artistry in two men knocking each other's brains out? Can't Newfield see that boxing is brutal and that it caters not only to the greed of those who promote it but also to the blood lust of those who watch it? Can't he see the hypocrisy of those who decry violence in the street but glorify it in the ring?

I hope ghetto kids who aspire to boxing careers will instead aspire to something far better and far nobler than fame, fortune, and possible brain damage and death in the ring. There are other options, Mr. Newfield, than the gym.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith


This letter was sent to the Village Voice but was not published.