Exercise Program for Sickly Seniors - Part 2

Some of you might remember the yoga post? Well the exercise classes for the disabled saga continues. We have moved on from yoga for elderly cancer patients to water aerobics for the almost dead. So I've joined a health club. This is a way of spending money that I have never really understood.

Spend thousands of dollars so you can get in your car, drive twenty minutes, get on a machine, run/bike/climb stairs to nowhere for 45 minutes, take a shower in a germ-ridden, slimy-tiled room worrying the whole time that someone is going to stick their sweaty head in behind your brownish rubber curtain and scream at the sight of the freak that you have become. Then jog back to the car with your wet hair before it gets too crunchy in the frigid air, drive another twenty minutes, and two hours later you've finished your daily exercise.

What kind of sense does that make, when, for no money at all, you can walk out your door, run for 45 minutes where the scenery changes with every step until you're home and done? And, if you want, you can shower without fear of frightening strangers who come upon you unexpectedly (with the exception of your son who is very afraid of seeing anything but your face, and even then seems pretty disturbed.)

But this is a new world I live in and I've been told that exercise in the water, where all my aching joints are well supported, will be a wonderful thing. So, a few times a week, I find myself standing in a pool, up to my neck in lukewarm, chloriney water watching a fit, young beauty queen dance gracefully outside of the water oblivious to the near deadly difficulty of seniors attempting to swing their droopy booties under the water.

I will not forget the feeling of walking into the pool area that first day and seeing so many gray, withered heads floating on the water's surface, like so many time-worn mooring buoys, knowing that my head would fit right in. When did I become this person? It seems that it wasn't so long ago that I could convince myself that I still had a tiny shred of mojo left, but as I approached that pool in my navy blue speedo, on top of lumpy legs and under a raggedy head of hair, I realized that the mojo is nomo.

As with any class I have ever taken, there are those who float around in the back of the class, not paying much attention, chatting among themselves - and then there is me. Front, center and struggling mightily (with disproportionate success) to do everything I am told. "Kick your legs", "sprint through the water," "sprint backwards" (?), "don't use your arms," "don't use your legs" (if I was not underwater when this command was barely heard, I might have raised my hand to comment that when immersed in water one must move arms or legs, and preferable both, to derive benefit from the program. But fortunately, just before several of us sunk for good, the dancing sprite on the pool's edge sung out a new command to turn over on our backs and "do the can can".)

All the while, the terrible soundtrack of the nineteen seventies is pounding away in the background reminding us all of how long ago it was that we had danced to these tunes on dry land, in the beer sodden fraternities and student centers of our youth. What could possibly be more depressing? Lying in bed, in pain, and unable to exercise, I suppose.

Last one in will rot faster than the rest of us!