The look on the kid's face in this archival photo below (c/o the Vancouver Archives) pretty much sums up the entire experience of gymnasium life for most kids in Canada in the 1980s.
As a parent with a kid in elementary school today, I haven't seen anything quite as sketchy as these creaky old beasts with exposed springs that used to sit near a corner in most gyms in this country. Many of the fixtures are the same - the basketball nets that you pull out at the rate of 1 inch per minute using an iron rod that turns, the heating systems, the benches, the dodge balls - but the bouncy death trap is no more!
