Exercising: What was once "awful" is now "unlawful"

I had tried to ignore it as long as I could but I knew it was time. Was it because I had recently logged in a daily total of 81 steps (most of them trafficked between the couch and the refrigerator)? Was it when I started walking down my basement stairs backwards, gripping the railing as though I were repelling into a splunking cave? Or was it the day that ALL my muscles ached just from the simple act of getting out of bed in the morning?

"I'll exercise with you," my husband graciously offered. I thanked him and then quoted Mark 6:4: A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home. I made the call that I had long been dreading.

Now...these were tricky times. Much like the persecuted Christians that were forced to meet in caves ("Not at ALL like the persecuted Christians that were forced to meet in caves," Brad clarified), my physical trainer and I would be taking a great risk in meeting and, gasp, EXERCISING together. I'm not sure if I included the gasp to denote shock that we were breaking rules or that I was exercising voluntarily. It was actually quite thrilling. Would the police come roaring up to our undisclosed location, lights flashing, sirens blaring, and order us to disperse through a blow horn? Would we be hauled off to jail in handcuffs? Would I have to call my husband for bail money and explain I'd been arrested for...exercising! My scary cell mate, clad in an over-sized orange jumpsuit, would glare at me through a haze of cigarette smoke and say, "Whatta in for?" and I'd snarl, "Exercising without a cause."

Except there WAS a cause! I got out of breath getting the mail!

So, throwing caution to the wind, we strapped on our sneakers, snapped on our leggings, and wrapped ourselves up in the Constitution to wrestle me back into shape...literally. "Are you double jointed?" PT asked.

"No," I told her, "Why?"

She frowned, "People don't normally bend that way." I had set clear perimeters regarding my capabilities. "Twenty minutes is all I can handle," I insisted before realizing that three minutes was all I could handle. She stopped the music and stared at me incredulously as I attempted to lunge, my arms stretched out like a tight-rope walker. "Your hands should be on your hips," she stated.

"I'll fall over," I said.

"Let me see," she ordered. After I flopped over, she offered some modifications.

"I should have been paying more attention to you," my trainer admitted, astonished that I had not managed to learn a single Zumba move after a year's worth of classes. "What on earth were you doing back there?" she asked, referring to my coveted back row spot conveniently located to my ice cold Pepsi and cosmic brownie.

More modifications were made.

"You can't do a jumping jack?" she learned, mortified. "Run in place."

"No, Amy...kick ball change," she said for the twentieth time as I flailed about like Bambi on ice. She demonstrated again and again. Got down on the ground and moved my sneakers for me like a weird foot puppeteer. Stood up, dusted off her hands, shook her head and said, "Run in place."

Much attention and ridicule had been directed my way when it was discovered in past classes that I had difficulty with cross-lateral movement. "I thought that was a joke," PT said as she watched in wonder as I kicked...let me amend that..."kicked" and punched from my right side then my left instead of the opposite sides as directed. She stood in front of me and yelled like a drill sergeant, trying to will my limbs into synchronization but it was not to be. "Run in place," she sighed.

Our first session was a grueling twenty minutes...eked out in three minute increments of my asking if it were over yet, interspersed with my enthusiastic clapping at the conclusion of every song. "Amy, there's only two of us here. You don't need to clap EVERY time," PT said.

For the second session, I was more wary. "Maybe we should cut back on the time," I suggested.

"Why?" PT asked.

"I think I have diabetes," I told her.

"What makes you think so?" she inquired, pulling her gloriously long dark hair effortlessly up into a sleek ponytail.

"The tops of my feet hurt," I explained.

"Good thing we're using the bottoms then," she responded before telling me to run in place.

My distraction techniques worked only on a limited basis. As I clumsily followed my trainer's graceful movements in our undisclosed location while waving at passing construction crews, tractors, and one curious cop car..."Is he coming back?" PT asked as we hid behind a nearby tree...I interrupted our session to clarify a lyric. "How does 'got hips like Hyundai' even make sense?" I complained, running in place. "Where does it say that?" PT asked, touched her palms flat to the ground while standing on one foot with the other leg lifted straight up into the air. I chanted out the lyrics to "Body Like a Backroad" to her. She stopped the music to check the lyrics and laughed. "It's 'hips like honey,'" she informed me before [oh no!] starting the song again from the beginning.

"Is it over?" I asked for the thousandth time, clapping as the song concluded. "Yes," she said, smiling as I began hobbling over to my truck, "We just need to do the cool-down." Ugh. I hate the cool-down. And shouldn't that be built into the twenty minutes?

For the most part, PT is professional, encouraging, and kind. But during the cool-down, she was down-right cruel. "What exactly are you stretching there?" she asked as I tried to mimic her crazy arm contortions. She tried to re-arrange me like I had Mrs. Potato Head parts. She pulled at my arms like she thought I was Elastigirl. Closest thing to Elistigirl, for me, is elastigirdle. Failing to tie my arms into a complex knot, PT then just took a picture of me to show her mom.

I drove away...my mouth aching from smiling so much...my stomach hurting from laughing so much...my muscles trembling from just the threat of being used. It was almost like being kinda back to normal. I had forgotten, for a moment, about wanting the pandemic to be over, and instead, like the good old days, had just wanted Zumba to be over. I can't wait to do it again.