For years I've had this tape running circuits in my head. You may have one of your own, but my tape is a total bitch, and for years, she has gotten away with saying things like: "You have no athletic abilities whatsoever. Remember tennis lessons when you were a kid? Oh sure, you
say the racquet had a hole in the centre, which is why, when the ball was served to you, it seemed to fly effortlessly right through the centre of your racquet. Oh, and how about that Canada's Fitness Test your gym teachers used to make you take every year...you know, the one that involved running the circumferance of the Peanut Plaza? You remember that don't you? It landed you in the hospital for a week because the Phys Ed teacher didn't believe that you were a severe asthmatic? Or, how about all those classes where you sat on the sidelines watching everyone else run and jump and dribble and pass? That was you, wasn't it, sitting right on the bench in your Betsy-Bloomer gym togs watching? Always on the sidelines...never in the game? I thought so."
Well, people I am here to tell you that voice has now and forever more been SILENCED, for it seems, that at the tender age of too damn close to "mid-century" I have discovered that indeed I do have some athletic abilities. Abilities that involve eye-hand coordination. Me! A gal who always subscribed to the basic theory of golf: if you can't play well, you can at least look good. A person to whom the meaning of eye-hand coordination was some mystery of life to be contemplated, along with the meaning of Pi or the Big Bang Theory.
But. BUT! Long about the time I decided to shed the excess baggage that had become my derriere, I realized controlling what I eat was only part of my weight-loss solution. I was going to have to figure out a way to move it, move it and shake it like a polaroid picture if I wanted to really get in shape. So, I started on the treadmill. Walking. At a slow and leisurely pace. I did that for a while until I realized that that gentle stroll was literally taking me nowhere, and so I ramped it up. I upped the speed at which I walked. And then? Then, I started really shaking things up by jogging in intervals. One minute of running, two minutes of race walking. Guess what happened? My legs got stronger. My lung capacity expanded and hey you mean old battle-axe gym teacher from grade 7 - I'M TALKING TO YOU - I can NOW run! I'm a jogger.
This new found ability to outrun my fat cells does not an athlete make. I know this. I'm not for one second professing to actually think I am fit, or anything. I'm just saying that now that I can run, I actually like to run and hey, guess what? It makes me stronger and more agile and because of that I can now do other things that require some measure of athleticism.
Things like: whip Buzz's ass at Wii sports.
That's right ladies & gents. I am a virtual reality jock.
Santa, in a somewhat passive-aggressive way, hoping to release my husband from the shackles of our sofa after dinner brought Buzz a Wii system for Christmas. Santa wasn't sure how this would go over with Buzz, given how much he enjoys his post-dinner couch surfing, but Santa, being an optimist, went ahead and delivered the game on Christmas morning anyway. It sat unopened for a couple of days and I thought for sure Santa had got this one wrong. Buzz was going to have none of it.
But then, three days after unwrapping it, Buzz decided it was time and so we hooked it up and tried our hand at tennis. Fore-swing, back-hand, overhead lob - I mastered them all. Well, sort of. It seems eye-hand coordination against moving objects is still not my strongest suit, but hey, I could at least make contact, which is a lot more then I can do in the real world! After tennis it was on to boxing and let me just say - I LOVE it when I literally knocked the head off my opponent's body. My mii went all Mickey Rourke on the other guy and I'm here to tell you, three days later my arms still hurt from the pounding I gave.
Once I started, I couldn't give up. I made Buzz play every single game on the system. Up next: bowling; a game I mastered years ago when I bowled in a league in Georgia. I even had my own shoes. Let me tell you - my glutes are still sore from all the lunging I did when releasing my ball.
Next up: golf. When we lived in the mountains Buzz and I would golf on a fairly regular basis. I never won. I simply was incapable of outdriving him and my short game? Forget about it. But in the virtual reality of Wii Golf? Let's just say, Michelle Li doesn't have a thing on me. I kicked Buzz's mii from one end of the course to the other. Victory was mine!
And that's when it first hit me. Perhaps this whole getting fit thing can translate off the treadmill and into the real world some day. Maybe some day I will actually be able to hit a real tennis ball. Or, perhaps some day, on a real golf course I will out-drive the man I married.
Until then...I will be satisfied in knowing that I am now a jock. Albeit a virtual reality jock, but a jock nonetheless.
