Phys Ed Class Refrain: Well, Excuuuuse Me

“My plastic surgeon doesn’t want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose.”

“I have a note from my tennis instructor, and he would prefer it if I didn’t expose myself to anything that would derail his teachings.”

--Cell-phone-toting girls to their P.E. teacher in the movie “Clueless.”

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Excuses to get out of P.E. are rarely so rich in real life. But who among us doesn’t understand the urge to worm out of phys ed from time to time?

Despite ongoing strides statewide to create a less threatening and more rewarding P.E., plenty of kids could earn master’s degrees in ducking it. So empathetic are parents, school officials say, that P.E. is the one class for which some will make up excuses for their children.

As another school year gets underway, dozens of Orange County high school students at beaches and malls were asked about the ins and outs of P.E.

Plenty of them love P.E.

A lot don’t.

Janice Kim, 14, a freshman at Garden Grove High School, hates running. In P.E., she says, it’s practically a law: must make teenagers who hate it run.

Nodding next to her on a bench outside Westminster Mall is friend Makoto Kin, 15, of La Serna High School in Whittier. Both are waiting for their hour-late ride. Both are wearing the makeup style of the day: brown lip liner and no lipstick.

“They just want to torture us,” Janice says. “Like, once every week, running a mile would be OK. If we have cramps or we’re sick, we just . . . help the teacher or the librarian.”

Adds Makoto, with an expression suggesting impending nausea: “Straight out? I hate P.E. We gotta run too much. . . . Ya gotta wear uniforms.”

“They don’t give us enough time to shower,” Janice adds. “We only have 10 minutes to change.”

The California Department of Education requires students to complete two years of physical education for high school graduation--specifically, 200 minutes every 10 days of school. It has long been required because physical fitness is recognized as an important component of overall health and well-being.

But how a student meets that P.E. requirement can be creative. It is one of the few required courses with built-in escape clauses at many schools. For instance, most school districts allow students to earn part of their P.E. credits by playing for a school athletic team. Many count participation in a marching band.

It’s up to each district to decide what flies and what doesn’t as long as the basics are covered.

At some schools, such as Magnolia High in Anaheim, students in the drill or flag team can apply their credits from those classes to their P.E. standard. At Dana Hills High in Dana Point, students can earn P.E. credits by taking the school’s surfing class. Some school districts allow cheerleading activities to count toward P.E.

Schools sometimes allow students to work out their requirement in activities not directly connected to school if they show good cause. At Dana Hills, a horseback class taken off-campus has counted. At another school, a student qualified with workouts at a nearby Family Fitness Center. In Northern California, a student earned her phys ed credits at a bowling alley.

Some kids may think this is getting out of jail free.

P.E. teachers smile at this. They were P.E. students once themselves.

Key above all is to teach students the necessity of physical fitness and inspire them to remain active throughout their life, says Jeanne Bartelt, the state Department of Education’s consultant on physical education and a former P.E. teacher.

If bowling is the sport of choice for a teenager--makes her most comfortable while exercising--Bartelt says, why not?

The bowler was in an independent study program, which by definition has a different structure than the standard high school, Bartelt says. The student’s bowling-as-P.E. was arranged with the help of her teacher, and the girl was learning a skill, had set goals and a schedule and was supervised throughout her semester at the lanes.

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Grousing about P.E. is popular sport, though a fair share of students welcome the chance to exercise something besides their brains at school.

“P.E.’s all right and everything,” says Paris Moua, a lean 16-year-old starting his junior year at Los Amigos High School in Santa Ana.

Alexis Nygaard and Theresa Vu, both 14 and from Westminster, say they really like P.E. They are dressed in the season’s fashion--hip-hugging faded jeans, vinyl purse totes and chokers with the symbols of the Chinese New Year. An added twist is to have bra straps visible from every edge of their tank shirts.

“I wouldn’t try to get out of P.E.,” says Alexis, a freshman at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana.

Most of the time, P.E. at the private Catholic high school is the last period of the day. But still, the girls say, some of their friends ditch P.E. by saying they are sick.

Standard ploys, many teens say, are to feign illness or menstrual cramps. The latter, teachers say, doesn’t work like it did, say, a generation ago.

Because P.E. approaches are changing from emphasis on competition to skills and the accomplishments of the individual, some educators say dodging P.E. is going out of style.

“I wouldn’t call it a heavily ditched class. That was the truth a long time ago,” says Bartelt, the state consultant. “That probably is one of the major myths around.”

Still, like all P.E. teachers, Bartelt has heard some good ones on why a student shouldn’t participate in class that day.

“I had a mother who wrote a note for her daughter that said sometimes her appendix hurt and she was afraid it would burst.” And then the student who offered: “ ‘I can’t run today because my ear hurts.’ I’d say, ‘OK, don’t run on your ear today, then.’ ”

Upward of 500 middle and high school P.E. teachers attended a workshop this summer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to learn new approaches to physical education. During the week, a daily newsletter included memorable excuse notes instructors had received from parents.

* “My son didn’t bring his P.E. clothes because we were remodeling our house and my son couldn’t get them.”

* “My child can’t do anything because of [constipation] for almost three days.”

* “Please excuse my daughter from P.E. today. She has a band concert tonight and doesn’t have time to take a shower.”

* “My son could not dress because he twix his leg.”

Of course, some excuses are legitimate, but P.E. teachers are left to sort it out. They know that some well-worn excuses mask underlying self-consciousness. Students worry about their appearance and athletic skills. Can they run fast enough? Will they be the last one picked for a team? Must they change clothes in front of everyone?

In a few instances, Bartelt says, a student’s reluctance to suit up for P.E. stems from family strife. She recalls letting one young girl off the hook, sensing something deeper was troubling her. She coaxed out of the girl that she’d witnessed her father beat up her mother that morning.

P.E. teachers, like perhaps no other instructor, must contend with a multitude of forces at play in their students’ attitude about class.

Ultimately, Bartelt says, the primary factors in how involved teens get in P.E. are the quality of the program and the teacher.

If they perceive a teacher’s expectations are unfair, “Kids nowadays kind of say, ‘I don’t need that!’ ” Bartelt adds. “Kids are less forgiving; they’re not going to just put up with it. Their respect for authority is not what it used to be.”

Speaking in defense of teen rebellion, a few students say it’s not that they hate exercise, it’s that they just don’t want to run exactly when a teacher blows a whistle and says run.

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Back at the Westminster Mall, two teens at a table in the food court suck on sodas and nervously tap their Vans tennies, contemplating the new season of dealing with P.E. class.

“I’m pretty much lazy. I fake that I’m sick,” says Ryan, 16, a junior at Edison High School in Huntington Beach. He would not give his last name. Neither would his friend Josh.

“A sprain is good. It’s hard to prove,” Ryan says. “I’ve said I sprained my ankle, I sprained my wrist.”

On the plus side, he says, “P.E. is coed, so that’s good. The sports coed are badminton and volleyball. The part where the girls bend over and touch the ground, I mean, which would you rather look at?”

Josh, also 16, and the Ed McMahon of this friendship, agrees.

“And we are not in band. You can quote us,” Josh says with a snort. “We are not in band.”

Ryan: “And neither one of us has a car. Or a license. So we’d just rather be here instead. Basically a lot of people ditch P.E. If you’re smart, you’ll find a way out of it. If you’re dumb, you just make up a bunch of excuses. One of your friends can forge a note for your mom. If you have friends. Which pretty much rules us out,” Ryan says, now on a self-deprecating roll.

Insult adding to injury, they say, Josh’s grandmother drove them to the mall; Ryan’s mother would be fetching them. Ugh!

Which, believe it or not, does bring us back to the subject of P.E. and a punch line.

Says Josh: “It’s pretty hard to ditch class when you don’t have a car. You gotta run pretty fast to stay ahead of the teacher.”