So, I’m in the 5th grade. It’s a crisp fall day as we file into the slab floored and corrugated metal building that my school used for PE class. My hair is in pig-tails and I’m probably wearing a jumper with shorts underneath because that’s what girls did in those days before gym suits were required. Our PE teacher is a tiny chain-smoking leprechaun of a woman named Mrs. Benny whose daily uniform consisted of a powder blue Adidas track suit, Keds and a police whistle.

Regardless of what drill or skill we were learning on any given day, Mrs. Benny was always big on warming up with “old school” exercises. Deep knee bends, toe touches, arm spins…the works. One day, and I can’t even remember when it started, she switched on a record player, ordered us to line up in rows with an arm’s length between us on either side and a roomful of 5th graders began marching in place to the mysterious “chicken fat” song.

I say mysterious because, even though I heard this song at least four times per week for two years afterwards, I never understood what it meant. I didn’t know what chicken fat was (unless it was attached to the meat course at dinner) and had no idea why I was doing push ups with this tune as the background music. The man singing it had a big, booming, look at me! show-tune kind of voice and his delivery did seem oddly familiar as he articulated what a daily exercise regimen should look like.

As I struggled to execute my sit-ups in time with the toxically cheerful rhythm of the music, the only image that ever came to mind was that of a plucked chicken jumping rope while wearing a hat. Pity me, readers. This was back in the day before any kids had ever even heard of the word cellulite or adipose.

Mrs. Benny would stroll around the gym giving the stink eye to any slackers and would sometimes attempt to model jumping jacks until a tubercular-style coughing jag brought her flailing to a halt. Unlike the male athletic coaches of later years whose ballooning physiques were more of a cautionary tale for the students they taught, Mrs. Benny was as thin as a Vanilla Wafer– but also as dark and sun-wrinkled as a piece of beef jerky. She loved a good joke and could cackle along if you managed to tell a good one, but she could quickly decide when it was over, and her terrifying visage could scare the donut holes out of even the worst kid. At first, “chicken fat” seemed as though it could be one of those jokes, but after two years of “Go–you chicken fat–go away!”, there was clearly something we were supposed to have learned from it. I confess that I didn’t until recently when a quick consult with Google showed me that other kids of my generation had been doing their side bends in fear of the dreaded chicken fat also.

Apparently, the song had gone by another name: The “Youth Fitness Song”. Words and music were provided by Meredith Willson, who had also written the score for “The Music Man”. The singer with the booming voice who critiqued our spastic moves as though he was watching from behind a two-way mirror was Robert Preston, Broadway’s original Music Man. What’s more, the song had been commissioned for President Kennedy’s Physical Fitness program of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and  copies had been sent out to all elementary schools during that era, though JFK had been dead for years by the time I did my first toe touch while listening to it. Either way, our school district–and Mrs. Benny– bought into the program hook, line and sinker.

Like all naive and extremely sheltered kids, I had too easily assumed ours was the only PE teacher warning us against the eventuality of biscuit arms and thighs dimpled like old golf balls. Looking back, it’s clear we were not the only kids exercising to a cautionary health narrative set to music. Even so, we were definitely the only ones forced to run relays by someone who looked as though she had fallen off a dusty box of Lucky Charms but who–if provoked–had enough moxie to kick an old man down a flight of stairs, I never questioned it or her if I knew what was good for me.

I’m sure Robert Preston AND his song were eventually eighty-sixed in favor of the “You can’t make my kid exercise or wear a gym suit” campaign. In fact, at the time of my retirement last June, high school PE was nothing more than walking in a circle around the gym wearing your regular clothes while talking on your phone. I wish I knew what happened to Mrs. Benny, but I’m guessing that time and her dedicated cigarette habit more than likely caught up with her. I’m proud to say that I still have my President’s Physical Fitness patches in a place of honor and despite fact that I wasn’t able to completely escape the inconvenience of cellulite as an adult, as long as I don’t wear shorts or go sleeveless, who’s going to even know?