STEPPING RIGHT INTO IT

It's been a few weeks and many meals since I was last there. Along the way, I caught an infection in my chest that has made me cough, sometimes uncontrollably in bouts and fits, making that lovely sound of bringing up the ‘you know what'. I stopped going because I didn't want to break out in one of the fits and embarrass myself.

As I awoke from a good night's slumber, I donned the gym gear and set off to the gym. There were no more excuses, the chest infection is gone for the most part and so I did what I had to do. I parked in the parking lot in hopes that the place had closed down since I was last there, but doggone it, people dressed like me were going and coming, once again, I had no choice.

Once I entered the building, it all comes back to me, rushing my mind like a dreaded visit to the dentist office. The people scattered about, all sweating and straining and not having a particularly good time of it. I head for the theater where a movie is playing, (The Longest Yard), how appropriate, and I mount the apparatus to begin my workout.

As I work out, it seems like weeks since I got on it yet there seems like an eternity when I will be finished! The struggle goes on as Burt Reynolds, Adam Sandler and Chris Rock play football from prison. My task is greater than theirs.

After a layoff, I decided I would go a little easy on myself and do only 20 minutes on the torture apparatus to give my body a chance to ease back into something I hate, but do as a form of punishment and discipline. Once you retire, you need some form of discipline to manage your day or the time gets away from you.

Part of the ‘fun' of going to a gym is to watch other people torture themselves, at various levels. You have the self-haters like myself who do it just to have some unhappiness in my life, there are others who do it for a fashion statement, usually young women in spandex wearing timers and calorie counters or step monitors or all of the above. There are the older folks who wear anything they can find, women in their late 50's working hard and seeing little results, and of course the old men who don't really work out, just congregate around the equipment and shoot the breeze. Most conversations are about food and medical networks, prescriptions and doctor visits.

And so I will continue this method of torture until I confess or die, whichever comes first to save myself, for what I have no idea.