If Trumpers weren’t so homophobic. they would adopt Peter Allen’s “Everything Old Is New Again” as their theme song.

Because it seems their goal is to bring back a lot of crap from the past, under the pretense of making America great “again.”

There are some pretty serious bad things Trump’s trying to make a comeback. Criminalizing abortion. Wiping out Black representation. Tariffing the hell out of everything. Good old insider trading. 

What might not seem as egregious, but which caught my attention this week, is the decision to reinstitute the Presidential Fitness Test.

Few things rake the muck in my soul as much as “physical fitness.” That’s because I suffered lacked it as a child – I was a really big kid who was taller and heavier than everyone else. By a lot.

There were things I just couldn’t do. Because of that, the class I dreaded more than any other – even more than science – was phys ed, aka gym.

It was in gym that I couldn’t tumble. I couldn’t climb the ropes. I couldn’t lift myself on the parallel bars. I couldn’t outrun the kid in my class who was on the track team.

When we did the wrestling unit, they couldn’t match me with anyone else because I was so much bigger. So they matched me with a state champion who weighed more than 100 pounds less. He flipped me over because he was a goddamn wrestler and I had no interest.

The most dreaded part of gym was, you guessed it, the Presidential Fitness Test. When I was taking it, it consisted of four parts – running a mile, straddling lines to demonstrate agility, pushups and sit-ups.

I was moderately capable at sit-ups. And because I didn’t want to be the class loser who got a zero on the Presidential Fitness Test because I couldn’t do any of the other parts, I went all-in on the sit-ups.

So much so that 24 hours afterward, my father took me to the hospital emergency room because I was in such pain from overexerting myself on sit-ups. I still only got 4 out of the 10 possible points.

The Presidential Fitness Test and mandatory gym classes are why we fail kids when it comes to their physical well-being. They’re afterthoughts and meant to pat the heads of kids who can do well in them.

But children who need help with improving their health and fitness are reduced to humiliation and failure. They’re bullied into accepting that there’s a pecking order in the gym and your actual fitness is not something you should be helped with – it’s something you either have or you don’t.

That’s why the test was abandoned by experts who look at countries that don’t have such tests and wonder why their people are healthier. It could be that they discourage athletic competition until children grow into their bodies and have a chance to find the best way they can attain fitness.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I got the urge to be more physically active. I wasn’t ordered to or told to. I wasn’t compared to other men my age.

I just thought it might be fun to run a little. And then I did it almost everyday for years. I ran – OK, that’s being charitable, but I sure as hell finished two New York City Marathons and dozens of races from 3 miles to half-marathons.

Not through some badgering by a teacher who couldn’t wait to coach his football players. But because I loved it. I felt better and experienced the joy of sweating for fun.

I’m 72 now. I don’t run regularly any more because of arthritis in my knees, but I did try to jog a mile or so when my wife and I visited Kauai in March. I do, however, ride a stationary bike every single day – 481 days in a row, to be exact – and it has revived my feeling of wellbeing.

When I did it yesterday, the instructor on the class video that’s part of the bike experience said something that resonated with me.

Exercise isn’t punishment. Exercise isn’t something you do because you’ve failed at something. 

It’s something you do because you want to.

That’s why reviving the Presidential Fitness Test is yet another stupid Trump idea. If you do well on it, you’re supposed to. If you don’t, you’re officially unfit – and left to wallow in that unfitness, because no gym teacher is going to help you figure out how to do what’s best for you.

It’s about winners and losers. And this is one of those things for which there should be no losers. Not if the goal is a happy, healthy country – which, come to think of it, is something that is anathema to the Donald J. Trump administration..