Exercise…What’s THAT?
By
Celeste T. Palermo, copyright 2004
“I bet if you exercise on a regular basis, you’ll feel better.”
I had been chatting with my sister, a personal life coach, for encouragement and direction. Juggling the long hours and various demands of mothering had left me exhausted. I felt run down and was well…just plain cranky.
“Yeah, I’m sure exercise will help. Thanks for the advice,” I said as I hung up the phone.
“Exercise…What’s THAT?” I thought. “Exercise seemed to be a word that once existed in my vocabulary, but since becoming a mom, I couldn’t quite remember exactly what it was. Fatigue from late night feedings and brain cell loss from two pregnancies had obviously done nothing for my memory.
It began to come back to me. “Ex…it’s one of those ‘ex’ words.”
Exorcize…that was moving on a Stairmaster for an extended period to shed any excess body weight and cast off any demons draining my energy and making me cranky. While I liked the demon scapegoat, as a Christian, I knew it was not plausible. Darn. Back to the drawing board.
Exercise. I began to list all the ‘Ex’ words to see if they would trigger my memory: Exert. Exorbitant. Excrete. Execrable. Exhaustion. Excuse. Excursion. Exempt. As I rattled off the words, a feeling of dread began to overtake me. Oh, I remembered exercise all right. Exercise was exerting an exorbitant amount of energy until my body began to excrete sweat. It was an execrable activity, usually resulting in exhaustion. Growing up, physical education classes were centered on exercise. I recall always wanting to have an excuse to go on an excursion, say, to get a route canal, so that I was exempt from exercise.
That was just like my sister. To exhort and extol the benefits of something she knows I do not like. Exercise is work! Sure, it might make me feel better…after exercising, it would surely make the rest of the day seem like a vacation. I could change a messy diaper in thirty seconds. Make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in two minutes. Fold a basket of laundry in ten. Bathe the kids in fifteen. Make dinner in twenty-five. But, exercise? If memory served me correctly, that required at least thirty minutes of effort, without stopping. No thank you, Sis.
I was upset. I went outside to get some fresh air and perspective. My neighbor was in her driveway. She waved.
“Hey, I’ve been wanting to talk with you for a while,” she yelled. “I’m about to go for a walk. Want to go?”
“Sure,” I said. I had nothing else to do and I figured it would help me blow off steam. “Let me put on my tennis shoes and grab the stroller.”
So I went for a jaunt around the neighborhood with my friend. We caught up and chatted for almost an hour. As we returned home, I was in a much better mood.
“There is nothing like a little girl chat to make you feel good,” I said.
“Yep. Exercise always makes me feel better too,” she said.
What? Exercise? I’d been tricked! I had exercised for almost an hour. And it wasn’t painful! And I wasn’t exhausted! I felt better. My sister was right.
Argh! I hate it when that happens. I think I hate that even more than exercise.
*Note: This story was featured in “For the Girls,” a column for www.sarahsmiley.com.
