Climbing The School Rope

Many moons ago I entered a high school gymnasium and today I can still remember the aroma. I think all school gymnasiums must have that same musty odor of human sweat and old sneakers oozing from the floorboards, equipment and rafters. I don’t think any cleanser can eliminate that odor no matter how much of it you applied. Once that odor is ingrained, it is there forever.

During the summer of 1976 my brothers and I would drive to the school gym in the evening. The August summer was hot and hazy. Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney & Wings was in heavy rotation on the FM radio station. We would all pile into the Ford and be in our own worlds as my Dad drove and dropped us off at the school curb outside the gym.

My oldest brother would go lift weights while my second older brother practiced his basketball skills. My younger brother would take a bag of footballs out to the practice field and kick field goals for a couple of hours. Me, I would muck around the weight equipment in the corner; Even though there was no corner, as the ceiling was a circular dome set on top a circular concrete walled building. I thought the engineering was cool.

In this part of the gym stood an all-in-one weight machine. You would pull out a pin and place it into the stack of weights that would move by the use of a cable and pulleys. I was quite a skinny runt who didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But instead, I tried to act out the part of thinking I knew what I was doing. I was a better actor than a weight lifter.

Near this weight machine there was a rope hanging from an attachment to the ceiling. I don’t know how high the rope was but I would guess it had to be 30–40 feet to the top. It was pretty high to the ceiling. The knot at the bottom was huge. How anyone could have tied that knot is beyond my imagination. That knot was an engineering feat all to itself. It was fun to sit on it while someone pushed you while you swung on the rope.

Climbing the rope was a whole other mind set. Firstly, the rope was quite thick. If your grip slipped you would have a massive rope burn on your hands and inner thighs; So you hung on for dear life. It was quite an ordeal to get any type of purchase on that rope. I focused on developing my hand strength and ignore the rope burns on the inside of my thighs. My sneakers would have to be angled precisely to gain that extra purchase to propel me up that rope. It took many times until I was comfortable enough to make it half way up.

Throughout the summer I would try to get to the top. I had built calluses in all the right places with my many attempts. I could hang on to the rope without exhausting my muscles while other kids below would yell for me to climb down. The view from up there was an all encompassing and I could see every inch of the gym from up at that height. I felt like I was hidden up there from everyone.

One day, the rope started to make me feel weird. Weird in a good way. My stomach started getting a butterfly kind of feeling. I thought I might faint so I would slowly make my way back down. It was a surreal feeling with my feet back on the ground. I would go purchase a can of Mountain Dew to help me back into reality; Not that I was exempt from reality, rather to bring me back from that butterfly feeling in my stomach.

My drink of choice that summer was between the Dew and Dr Pepper. To me they were good gym drinks in the heat, and man was that summer hot! The air circulation in that gym was non existent. There was no movement of air anywhere to be found. It could be blowing a gale outside, all the doors could be wide open and the gym would be stifling hot inside with absolutely no breeze to offer relief.

The rope became my focus in those last days of summer. I was mastering getting to the top in an easy manner. I would time myself and attempt to break my record. I wish I would have documented those times. Oh hindsight, my great super power.

The butterflies in my stomach would sometimes become more powerful as I reached the top and hanged on for dear life.

Then it happened.

The butterflies moved to my lower regions. It was a life changing moment for me. I had never felt this feeling before. It was a lightness inside of me and would build. I would slowly start making my way down the rope and once I reached bottom I would lay down on one of the wrestling mats they had on the floor under the rope. I would gaze up the rope and ponder what was happening to me way up there.

It felt good.

What would happen if I stayed up there longer? What if I couldn’t hang on? Would I loose consciousness and fall to my death? What was making me feel so good? Adrenaline? I didn’t know anything about adrenaline then, this is all in hindsight while writing this. Today I know exactly what was happening to my body and hormones. Back then, nadda. I had no clue except that I liked the feeling that it brought to me forty feet above the floor.

Then it happened…., for real.

I knew nothing about my physiology at that young age. I was probably fourteen years old. Those butterfly’s flew down to my nether regions. Man-o-man, I was sent into another dimension. All my muscles tensed and I held on while the feeling of bliss filled my whole body. It lasted only a few moments, and the feeling surged throughout my whole body. I had no idea what was happening to me, and I wanted it to last forever.

I thought I had wet my shorts. I was pretty sure I had. I descending down the rope bit by bit until I sat on the big knot. I hung there for a long time regaining my senses. I didn’t know what had happened to me at the top of the rope in that moment. I only know that I wanted more of it. I spent the last days of that summer in the gym climbing that rope and enjoying that beautiful feeling of ejaculation. I was a young boy addicted to that feeling.

I spotted the wrestling coach watching me once as I achieved that high once more and just smiled as I oozed inside my shorts. I could see by his expression that he knew what I was experiencing as he buried his face in the palms of his hands. I guess it is just a ritual that all boys mistakenly discover at that young age and then start collecting Playboy magazines, which they hide under their mattress.

I am not embarrassed one iota telling you this. I could bet my life savings that you have experienced this when you were young as well. It’s laughable now. It’s not a bad thing for adolescents to go through. I think it is a normal human condition. It’s biology allowing our hormones to assist us in experiencing all of life’s joys. It’s natural. If I could live that part of life again, I would climb that rope until I blacked out and fell back to earth.

I don’t have any more to say on this subject. I can not extrapolate further. I love life and the joys of discovering myself even at my age. I love reminiscing and I hope I didn’t cross the line writing about my discovery as a youngster. I hope you had a laugh at my expense and could relate. If not, Ce La Vie!