Reducing [fiction]

This is my Idea, but you can Steal it if you want…

THE GERM:  One day, I was thinking about an experience I had in 6^th grade. Our phys ed teacher was strictly Old School: what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. That went for humiliation, too.

He put all the boys through a series of heats. The Final race included, not the fasted kids, but the slowest kid. The loser of each heat faced off against each other for the title of Slowest Kid in School.

GERMINATION: Why do I remember that incident so vividly? I was a loser of one of the heats. But in the Finals, I was the fastest of the slow. The capital-L Loser was a slow, fat kid.

Yes, it was demeaning to be included in that last race, but it didn’t scar me for life. By the 8^th grade, my legs had filled out and I was one of the best middle distance runners in the school.

Still, that experience stayed with me. It’s time for me to put my spin on it. I re-imagine this as a way to get each kid to ‘race himself’ by trying to improve his best time.

WORKING TITLE:  “Reducing”
FORMAT:  Book
GENRE:  Teen Fiction
PREMISE: Phys Ed teacher convinces kids to beat themselves and not each other
SETTING: Junior High, anywhere in the U.S.
CHARACTERS:

I think the story works best with girls, but it was my experience, so I’ll keep it in the male gender.

• Teacher – Got in trouble at his last job for lowering kids’ self-esteem by promoting competition.
• Principal – She just doesn’t get what the teacher’s trying to do. Tries to introduce Common Sense into Political Correctness
• Big kid #1 – Built like a football lineman. Has problems at home; breaks a leg, etc; manages to break his record by just one second
• Big kid #2 – Fat, and there’s no way to finesse that. He has the biggest improvement, but it’s not good enough, percentage wise, to win the prize
• Fast kid #1 – Short kid tacked on 6” to his height during the year. His body type changed into the ideal runner.
• Fast kid #2 – Chunky kid grew up but not out. His body didn’t change that much, but his determination to excel did.
• Brainy kid – Improved the most from the beginning of the year to the end, but has no taste for competition – with himself or others. He likes running, but just for the sake of running.

TO GET YOU STARTED:

The book follows a teacher and his 8^th grade physical education students through a whole school year.

On the first day of class, the school’s new phys ed teacher has everyone run 400 meters.

The Teacher logs all the results, then tells the class that the Best Runner is the one who – by the end of the school year – makes the biggest reduction in their time. (Not the greatest reduction of raw time, but the biggest percentage reduction: there’s a big difference.)

Few of the kids get the point of what he’s trying to do. Plus, his unorthodox ways of emphasizing fun (kickball in Middle School, picking teams at random, changing how points are scored in games) attracts the wrong kind of attention.

One of the athletic kids complains that he’s already fast, so he won’t be able to reduce his speed by much. But he is young enough to get better. The question is, is he hungry enough to get better?

One of the slow kids complains that he’ll never get faster. The teacher responds, “Just don’t get any slower….”

A Guidance Counselor accuses him of hurting the children’s self-esteem through an emphasis on weight reduction. “It has nothing to do with getting thinner, but getting healthier.”

In the final race, which will determine the biggest reduction in time, the Brainy kid slows. “I don’t need this,” he says matter-of-factly. The overall winner is the Hungry kid.

NOTE: If you’d like to develop this Idea further, just leave a Comment and claim it.

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