What is fun about exercise? For me the word is synonymous with work. There is a sense of accomplishment, if not survival when you might have completed a certain number of circuits around the high school track—but then there is the end result—exhaustion.
Jumping Jacks, etc. were okay when you are all lined up doing the same movements, but then there is the really hard work of push-ups.
As a developing pubescent wimp, if anyone had told had told me how the weight room would have given me that classic Greek Apollo physic when I was old enough to be intrigued with other Greek gods’ bodies, I probably would have been so narcissistic I would beat the gym doors down to get started on that evasive body beautiful. Alas, I never met a barbell that I liked.
Team sports were my 6th grade downfall and ultimate lifetime avoidance of participating or watching. How validating it was to be one of the boys on the team, until my total lack of eye-hand-arms and -legs coordination disqualified me, especially after consistently striking out. Forget football; basketball—dribbling impossible. Wrestling and boxing meant you could get hurt and besides they were not only competitive, they were too aggressive for the timid soul.
It seemed I was destined to be like Ferdinand the Bull, all he could do was lie around and smell the roses. Without rigorous exercising how was I to become a man so that when the time became evident I might lie with a woman or better yet in the Biblical sense “lie with a man”?
Looking back on so many physical education failures I wonder that I have managed, in spite of myself, to live this long, loved so much, slept with wonderful people, and can still get up out of bed each day and put one foot in front of the other. Perhaps that might qualify as heavy duty passive exercising.
© 24 August 2015
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