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The Jump-Rope Test at Hamaron’s Elementary School

At comedian Hamaron’s elementary school, kids worked their way through jump-rope ranks. One of his friends decided to go for “Master”—in second grade.

Hamaron’s school days

Japanese comedian Hamaron remembers a school where jumping rope was serious business: kids earned ranks by mastering tricks and completing jump counts. Here’s how he tells it.

Going for “Master”

Hey, Hamaron here.

Jump rope was huge at my elementary school. We did it in gym class. Some of the girls could do triple unders—that’s three turns of the rope in a single jump. That’s how good people were. We even had ranks based on your jump-rope skills.

There were numbered ranks, like Level 1 and Level 2. Every time you managed a harder trick, you moved up.

Then there was “Master.” For that, you had to do 1,000 regular jumps in a row. Nothing fancy—one turn of the rope per jump.

One of my friends decided to give it a shot. Around 600 or 700 jumps, he started making this pained face and saying, “It hurts! It hurts!”

We were only in second grade. The only kids who made Master were fifth and sixth graders, and here was my friend trying to do it in second grade.

“Come on! This is no time to be saying it hurts!”

“Keep going! Keep going!”

Then he said, “It hurts! It hurts! My butt hurts!”

…Wait. His butt? Not his knees—his butt?

He did make it to 1,000. But he’d jumped so much that his intestine had dropped down and was sticking out. Apparently, it was rubbing against his pants. That was what hurt.

He went into the hospital the next day and missed about ten days of school.

The following year, they lowered the requirement for Master to 300 jumps.

A jump rope with white handles and a green-and-white striped cord lies on a magenta background.

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