A Brilliant Plan That Depends on Invisibility

Susie chose P.E.

I have never been an athletic person. The only exercise I get is from jumping to conclusions. That and fidgeting. So I have never been very fond of P.E.
I did have a very kind coach for two years in elementary school, and for those two years, P.E. wasn't as bad as it could have been. Plus, that was where I discovered my uncanny skill at crab-walking. (If P.E. were more crab-walking-centric, I would have loved it. I would probably be a crab-walking coach by now, teaching crab-walking gold medalists.)
I spent the four years of my prior elementary school life in a completely different environment.

I don't remember the coach's name, but I seem to remember her as an older woman -- although to a little boy, that could just mean "older than mom" -- with glasses. She would put on this scratchy record that played children jingles/directions for stretching.
"Climbing, climbing up so high / climbing, climbing to the sky," and we would stretch our arms upward in a climbing motion.
While I liked how it scanned, I didn't care for the repetition.

Anyway.
After stretching we would run a .... distance of some length measured by laps around three landmarks in the yard outside the gym: a stumpy pine-tree, a telephone pole, and a basketball pole. The coach referred to it as "running Pine Tree, Pole, Pole."
After doing two laps, I decided I'd had enough of this foolishness and cut across an open field with the intention of pretending I'd run the final lap.
While the coach watched us.
Elementary-school Will was not the brightest crayon in the box.
But I guess the weird consolation was that I wasn't alone. Two others had had the same idea and had already been caught.
I didn't see them when I started across the field. I would like to think that if I had noticed two other people who had been caught, I would have glommed on to the fact that the coach's eyesight wasn't quite as bad as I apparently thought.
I waited with the two others while the remainder of the class finished their laps.
This caused a bit of confusion because the coach would yell, "Come on! Come on!"
And I would think she meant us, so I would start up the steps. "Not you, Will. Stay there."
This continued several times until the coach was screaming at me. "Not you! Will! Stay there!"
Not the brightest crayon.
When the last person had honestly finished his laps, the three cheaters were marched in and shamed before the class.