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Phys Ed 101


Everyone tells me exercise is good for me and I should try it. I have tried it and I don’t like it. This is not a character flaw; it’s due to my blood type. I’m Blood Type B. We hate exercise. We also tend to outlive all the other blood types and require fewer joint replacements. This is because we use the Professor Harold Hill “Think System” as espoused in the musical The Music Man. Before there was The Music Man, there was my mother and her mother before her. They didn’t have to exercise. Exercising had not yet been invented in Poland. Working from dawn to dusk was enough. They did, however, occasionally do some stretching. This happened after dinner was cooked and they were waiting for the men to come home. They would go to the door, open it, take a deep breath, and stretch their backs a little. Then they’d close the door and play solitaire until it was time to ladle out the soup. My sister also hated exercising. When she was young, she rode horses. We were poor and she couldn’t afford riding sessions so she mucked out stables and rubbed down sweating horses in exchange for a horse and saddle on Saturday afternoons. When she got much older and much fatter she actually was forced to do a little directed exercising at a gym. She confessed that she was able to walk uphill more easily for a month or so until hanging onto life got in the way of personal training time and she reverted to her original loathing. Our father also never exercised. He smoked four packs of cigarettes a day while he was telling other people what they were doing wrong. When he died of a COPD-induced heart attack at the young age of sixty-four, his hips, knees, and shoulders were squeaky clean and free of scar tissue. At least we think they were. Other than the cardiologist that told him he would drop dead if he didn’t stop smoking, he never went to the doctor. Instead he went from work straight to bed where he’d lie on his side, smoke a cigarette, and read a book. I cannot remember a single time when any member of my family took up running, swimming, jumping, playing any sports game, or joining any gyms. At the time, there were no gyms on Echo Park even if they wanted to join. Golf came later for remote cousins who moved to greener pastures and built their own Club. They had to. The existing Clubs refused to let them in because they were Jewish. As you can see by now, I had no historical precedent to learn about physical exercise; I had no parental guidance for sports activities; and by genetic predisposition I detested everything but dancing. We’ll get to dancing later. It should come as no surprise that in elementary school I was the last to be picked on any and every outdoor activity. I could neither catch nor throw and running was out of the question. Physical Education classes were lessons in humiliation until I got a reprieve. When I was eleven, everyone in my class was examined for scoliosis. We had to turn our backs to the nurse, then bend over and try to touch our toes. The girls did this. I don’t know what the boys did because I later learned this exercise was used to check for other issues. In my case, the nurse touched my back, declared I had scoliosis and sent a letter home to my mother advising her to get me to a doctor so I could be placed into a back brace. Ma read the letter and then we had a chat. “The nurse says you should have a back brace. My cousin Leah was put into a back brace. It was like an iron torture machine. She was in pain all the time. Do you want a back brace?” “No.” “Okay, we will throw this letter away and forget about back braces.” And that, people, is how I got out of having to be on a sports team and instead was ferreted into special classes where we were forced to lie on the ground and do stretching exercises. None of them worked and all my classmates grew up to have crooked backs. Then came JFK’s great Physical Fitness Program of 1961. My high school took part in a sweeping reform intending to restore physical health to a nation of incipient couch potatoes. We were tested at the beginning of the year, forced to undertake rigorous training, and retested at the end of the program. I was voted Most Physically Unfit of 1961. It’s not like I never tried. I wanted to hit the baseball with the bat, really I did. One time I actually made contact except I was afraid to throw the bat down and run. By the time I had carefully and respectfully placed the bat on the ground, I was out. So much for baseball. Then I tried horseback riding. If my sister could do it maybe I could, too. On my first lesson the instructor made us try to stand up on the horse’s croup, or the back part behind the saddle. I was afraid to stand on a step stool. Can you picture me standing on a horse? Neither could I. Also, when they trotted I bounced too hard. So riding was a no go. Volleyball was also vetoed. You have to be able to hit the ball. Running was out of the question because they didn’t want to keep the field unlocked long enough for me to reach the goal line. Bowling was ridiculous because you have to throw the ball forward instead of backward. Soccer hadn’t been invented in Los Angeles yet, but I know that would never have worked because when my son was five or six I pretended I could be a stand-in father and took him to the park with a soccer ball for a little practice. I broke three fingernails and he kicked the ball into my shin so hard there’s still a bump. Are you getting bored with my litany yet? You should be. I am. But wait! I need to tell you about the two things I might maybe have been good at. In college they offered archery. I have little memory of it but apparently I was able to hit somewhere in the haystack. Years later I tried shooting a bow and arrow at a Renaissance Faire. Once the overseer convinced me to put the arrow facing the target instead of into the crowd, I hit a bullseye. My husband was impressed, I left while I was ahead. Also, and I think I’ve told you about this before, when I wanted to take ballroom dance classes and he didn’t; and he wanted to go target shooting and I didn’t; we struck a deal and did both. He showed me how to correctly hold a Ruger revolver with a nine inch barrel. I couldn’t see anything so I held it incorrectly and outperformed everyone in the gallery. When he gave me a cute little thing with a three inch barrel we never found where the bullets went. I stopped target shooting; he stopped ballroom dancing; and no one got hurt. Now I’m old and getting out of the recliner once or twice a night counts as exercise. Everyone I know who has been good about going to the gym has had torn thing repair surgeries or is medicated for muscle, nerve, and joint pain. This includes my lovely hyperactive buddy who works out six days a week and will outlive us all. I’ve surrendered to gravity, yet my back hurts less than it did when I was younger. From time to time I still take up dancing. Lately I’ve swung back into the ballroom dancing fold. Because of my age and lack of stamina, I feel qualified to join the elder dancers who frequent the local senior centers on any given afternoon. For $3-$5 you get an hour of instruction, three hours of open dancing to recorded music or a one-man-band, one brownie, and all the boiled coffee you want. Not only that, you can be home in the recliner before it gets dark. Finally, a sport that’s right up my alley!


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