Exercise

What can I say about exercise? I don’t particularly care for it. I know it is necessary. I’ve never been good at it. I’ve had issues with it my entire life. There was a short time in the fifth grade when I got into touch football, but that was nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse to hang out with the neighborhood boys. I never played sports in junior high, high school or college.

I struggled through P.E. class back in the day when girls had to wear atrocious gym uniforms. Mine was a navy blue polyester knit short romper number which snapped at the shoulders. U-G-L-Y, not to mention that polyester is not a good fabric choice to wear when sweating is allegedly the point. The uniform should have been taken home daily for a washing, but we were only allowed to take them from our gym locker on weekends. I blame my school district’s poor fashion sense and lax laundry requirements for my failure to bond with sports.

In college I took modern dance and bowling for my physical education credits. Bowling was fun. We met at an off campus alley and I actually became a decent bowler. In my mid-twenties I even joined a bowling league. It seems bowling might be the only college course I took that I actually used later in life. Modern dance was another story. That class has come to be known as the Great Dance Debacle of 1976. I was in a class with girls who were actual dancers; they all had years of ballet, tap, jazz, baton twirling, and God knows what else behind them. I had two gymnastics classes at the Y before my mother decided it was too much trouble to load up all four kids and drive to the classes. I rarely attended my modern dance P.E. class and the final exam, which I had to take if I had any hope of barely passing the course, was to perform our own choreographed dance. I danced my “original” dance composition to Cat Stephens singing “Morning Has Broken.” For my costume I wore a chambray work shirt with “Morning Has Broken” embroidered in orange and yellow variegated thread on the back over my black dance leotard. I stitched the words myself in high school and thought its beauty might carry the dance. I choreographed the entire dance on the spot in front of the teacher and my classmates, hoping they would think I had spent hours figuring out the steps. I shudder to think what I may have looked like. Martin Short’s Ed Grimley comes to mind. I made a “D” on the final and passed the course. I’m sure I was given a “D” instead of an “F” just because I had the nerve to show up for the final. I can’t hear “Morning Has Broken” without wondering what an ass I made of myself that day. As a consequence of the Great Dance Debacle of 1976 both of my daughters have extensive dance training beginning at age 3.

My first experience with organized exercise was at a place called Elaine Powers Exercise Studio in the late 1970s. My Aunt (three years my senior) and I joined together and went for exercise at least three times a week. We wore Jane Fonda-inspired leotards and headbands. We stood or laid on machines that jiggled our (non-existent) fat, did a few sit ups and then went out that night for a few cocktails and fattening happy hour food. We were young and thin and only imagined we had bulges. I was a size three then and can still recall the horror of purchasing my first size five designer jeans (ah – to be so young, naive, and thin again).

After two pregnancies I began an expensive habit of buying gym memberships and never using them. I must have thought the mini scan card hanging from my keychain would magically reduce my ass and sculpt my arms – it didn’t. Shortly before my 50th birthday I found Haffis, the personal trainer. He charged even more than the previous gym memberships combined, but he held me accountable. He made me exercise, and if his phone calls chastising me for missing scheduled workouts weren’t enough the monthly bank draft that rivaled a car payment sure did the trick. Haffis was fun, pushed me hard, and got results. For the first time in my life I felt athletic. With a background on the U.S. Olympic track team he believed everyone could run, even an almost fifty year old overweight woman who bought running shoes based on color, not function. He made me run (or perhaps jog is the more appropriate term). I found I could do it. I never got to the point of liking it, but I could do it; first one mile, then two, then a 5K run. Wow, I even had aspirations of a half-marathon before my fiftieth birthday. And then, pain. My almost fifty year old knees, unaccustomed to such brutal treatment, rebelled. Ice packs after every run became a necessity. So I quit, cancelled my bank draft, told Haffis goodbye and never went back.

Which brings me to today; I’m hitting the pavement this morning. It is 7:00 a.m. and 28 degrees and I am going for a run. I may not get far, but I’m going outside where I will put one foot in front of the other. I have my ipod cued up to “Morning Has Broken” – I may not be a dancer, but I know I can run, maybe only to the end of the block, but it’s a start. Thank you, Haffis.