July 25, 2004

This summer I have been feeling somewhat lethargic, so I thought it might be good to turn that lethargy around and get some exercise. But that turned out to be stupid.

Exercise, you see, is where you deliberately do something that makes you miserable in order to stave off guilt and achieve some unquantifiable future goal that never quite happens, kind of like going to church on Sunday nights and learning people's names at Harding "mixers."* Exercise is the direct result of the perverse (but all too common) mindset that if I don't like it, it must be good for me. This kind of logic is the basis for the entire Democratic Party platform, which is why that the party has managed to be consistently wrong on absolutely every issue that's ever been brought up, including boxers vs. briefs. But it's just not true. It's not true for mushrooms, and it's not true for exercise. If it were true, you'd see a lot more people sleeping on barbed wire, or watching C-Span.

I should probably qualify that last part a bit. I actually enjoy mushrooms a lot. They're pleasantly squishy.

I guess it's possible that for some people exercise makes them feel better, but I don't buy it. There's just something about having sweated enough to generate your own tributary to the Amazon only with more dirt, stinking like you just rolled down a mountain of recently soiled diapers, and not being able to see anything that isn't directly in front of one eye or the other because of the bleary flashing-star void that is occupying 70% or so of your normal field of vision that just doesn't strike me as feeling "better." Better than being experimented on by Nazis, maybe. But not better than the state I wanted to feel better than, that is, before I started.

Now Chris, you are probably thinking (man, you are so smug), "You may feel momentary waves of extreme coronary distress immediately after exercise, but you should feel bounteous bursts of energy for the rest of the day afterwards." You are clearly a filthy, pagan liar. After some exercising fun time, I'm normally reduced to an immobile saline pool of sludge on an armchair, unable to write C-Files, play bridge, or even laugh at the sophisticated humor of Wings reruns. I'm trying very hard to understand the appeal here.

I really want to like exercising. I do. But let me be frank, or better yet, let me be Randolph. There isn't a form of exercise out there that I enjoy, and I've tried a lot, like, at least three.

Take walking, for example. Fairly simple, low impact, nice cardiovascular workout, pleasant, no competition or skill required, right? Well, that's what I thought too, but you have to remember that I have the cardiovascular fitness of a 150-year-old stroke victim. It doesn't take much to get my heart rate up to numbers normally reserved for weekly federal income tax withholdings. This posed a dilemma when it came time to start a healthy walking regimen with my brother's fiancée, who wanted to start walking for thirty minutes twice a day every day, unless something really unavoidable comes up like she gets tired. This seemed like a lot of walking to me, but she explained to me that it's fun and invigorating, especially when you do it at dusk, when you are more likely to have all of your bodily fluids sucked out by hordes of mosquitoes, thus resulting in additional weight loss. So I joined her.

Now, I live at the end of a cul-de-sac (French for "cul of sac") at the bottom of a hill that, from the vantage point of a newbie walker who weighs as much as certain species of moose, could not be any steeper without requiring a grappling hook or pick ax to ascend. Erin began immediately and briskly striding up the hill, like this level of incline wasn't a big deal at all, and then called back "Come on, slowpoke!" in a friendly voice that suggested that I was deliberately going at a slow pace for the sole purpose of annoying her, when in fact I was simply trying to make sure that my blood didn't suddenly come spurting out of my various orifices as a result of increased pressure. She certainly didn't want to slow down to match my level, and there wasn't a scruple's chance in Washington I was going to match her level, so we pretty much ended up walking alone, which, frankly, was boring. The next time we walked I tried keeping up with her, and I lasted a good twenty minutes at her pace, but when I finally got home, I found that, to my great chagrin, I had lost the will to live.

But what about sports? Many sports are considered "fun" by various people, and I suppose I can see why. But I have no real motor skills when it comes to that kind of thing. I can barely walk to chapel everyday without cracking a rib. What makes people think I'd be good at some sport? Well, nothing, when it comes to basketball or football. That's why these sports are okay. Most people figure out pretty quickly that I suck and decide that it would really be in the best interests of the team if the team pretended like I wasn't necessarily there. So I basically stand around and look like I'm exercising, which may not actually count.

The sport I hate playing the most, however, would have to be volleyball. I actually enjoy this sport, and I can often play it in such a way that, from a distance, I look like someone who knows what they're doing. But that's only before the game starts. Once score is being kept, I degenerate into a Muppet-like collection of flailing limbs, and none of which ever seem to hit the ball in an upward trajectory. The WORST PART, however, is the inevitable set of comments from my teammates. Do they say, "Go away, you suck?" No. That would be too merciful. They come up to me and very kindly and condescendingly explain what I should have done in that situation. "You see, Chris," they say, in all sincerity, "the idea is to hit the ball up , like this, see?" "Oh," I am tempted to say. "Up , you say? That changes everything! I had no idea!" It drives me crazy. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do, I just suck. This kind of thing happens with Ultimate Frisbee, too.

Well, how about swimming? Swimming is very fun. And it's so low impact that very wrinkly people are doing it all the time. This is all true, but it's hardly the most convenient form of exercise, since we don't have a pool. We have to go to the country club, where we have to deal with (shudder) the courteous and reliable Pool Staff. The staff at North River Yacht Club is so courteous and reliable that they will often (for your special benefit) leave the hot tub open for a full seven of the eight hours it's supposed to be open, and will only remind you a scant twenty-three times over the course of fifteen minutes that the pool closes at 8:00, which is in only 45 minutes, so don't mind me as I go lock the locker room, turn off the lights, and give the pool a shock treatment while you are still in it, don't mind me. The courteous and reliable Pool Staff is very eager to not be working. In fact, today, the courteous and reliable Pool Staff forced everyone out of the pool five minutes after we got in to inform us that a Severe Thunderstorm Warning had been issued for an adjacent county, so please go home. He told us he was very sorry to say this, very sorry that our afternoons were spoiled by the horrors of a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, very sorry to make us leave, very sorry indeed, clearly communicating the idea that, really, he was not sorry at all.

The courteous and reliable Pool Staff are a strange and resentful bunch. You know what I think they could use? Some exercise.

* You're not allowed to use the word "party" at Harding, but trust me, I've been to some of these mixers. Nobody's tempted.