Exercise

I’m making an attempt to get into shape. To be more specific, I’m making an attempt to get into a different shape than the one I’m in. Something not so blobish.

To this end, my sister and her fiancé pick me up each Thursday to go to the Y. This overcomes the first obstacle: avoidance is impossible. There’s only so long that I can hide in my living room, peeking out from behind the curtains like Boo Radley, while they annoy the neighbors by leaning on the horn.

We started out with swimming, since we’re used to that. (Ok, my sister and I are used to swimming. Her fiancé is used to imitating a golden retriever.) First day, we decided on a set of 20 laps, to be increased by 2 laps each week. No problem, right? After all, years ago when we were on the swim team, 20 laps was a warm-up before the real workout.

Go back and look at that last sentence. Take careful note of the phrase “years ago”. Now substitute “many, many, many years ago”.

After the first ten laps, I had some inkling of what that first protopod felt like as it crawled out of the primordial ooze onto dry land and gasped for a lungful of air. (Gasp is a more flexible word than you’d imagine. You can gasp in astonishment. You can gasp in fright. And you can gasp for oxygen. They all sound very different. When I gasp after 10 laps, it sounds like a sucking chest wound.)

After several weeks of watching us consistently outpace him (during which our laps increased to 34, and our lungs became accustomed to processing chlorinated water), Billy suggested changing things up a bit. So we played racquetball.

I had only been in a racquetball court once before and that was years (and years and years..well, you know) ago. Let me tell you, I had a blast! Like 3D billiards. Bank shot off the ceiling, into the corner, toe the line, and WHAMMO!! My point. All we need is to set one up in microgravity and I’m in heaven.

Three weeks ago it was skiing. I had never skied before. Ever. And let me tell you, I made the agony-of-defeat guy look good. I bruised in places I didn’t know I had. My doctor made me take a week off from swimming. And somehow (I must have been hypnotized), I’ve been convinced to go again. Everyone I’ve talked to says the first time is a different experience. Nobody I’ve talked to has said in what way. I’m actually looking forward to it, though, because the first time I was working too hard and didn’t take time to figure out if I was enjoying myself. I figure, if I don’t enjoy myself this time, that’s it for skiing.

Today it was tennis. The last time I played tennis was years, etc, with my friend Mark and his dad. At that time we were of the age where tennis was more like baseball.

“It’s a long fly ball over the center field fence. It’s going….going….gone!”

And then we’d laugh like maniacs.