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By Maura Madden
I am not an athletic person. I am not somebody who has the necessary abilities to participate in physical exercise. I am not interested in pushing myself to the limit of anything. Some may say that I am lazy, and to them I say, you are right. I am lazy. Once, twice, three times I'm lazy. I donÕt like being physically uncomfortable, and I can never exercise for long enough to get past the discomfort stage. And ladies and gentlemen, discomfort is highly overrated.
I can't seem to get psyched about team sports, either. I am against the mock-military structure of team sports, the "we're-all-in-this-together-against-them, let's-get-out-there-and-decimate" kind of attitude. Especially since I am always the person who is the target of the shared feeling of "we're-all-in-this-together-against-them-but-why-is-she-here-ruining-everything". I am bad at throwing, catching, running, hitting, weaving, tackling, dodging, pick-and-rolling, out-fielding, in-fielding, goalkeeping, guarding, intimidating, anticipating and rebounding. I believe that I would be good at charging the mound, 'cause IÕm feisty and I have a bad temper, but charging the mound is not a consistent source of good exercise, nor is it something that gets you picked for a team.
Solo athletic endeavors are not for me, either. I tried to take up running in San Francisco. I ran every other day for seven days. In total I managed to run for approximately 31 minutes over the course of those seven days. I started out strong for the first 15 seconds of each run. Those 15 seconds seemed ripe with the possibility of athletic glory. But come second 16, I was already tired. The next seven-plus minutes were torturous. Which is why at the end of that week, I gave up running.
The one sport that I am good at is swimming, but I can't afford to join a gym with a pool. In high school, it was the only team sport that I tried out for. I made the team, but I decided to be in a play instead. Typical nerd crap, that's what that was. In the water, I am fast, graceful and even competitive. And I have been a good swimmer since I was really young. One summer I was forced to attend an odiously snooty sports camp out on Long Island. The camp was at a famous athletic club and in order to enroll I had to be "sponsored" by a family that had a membership at the club. This sponsorship was not financial; it was simply a mechanism for keeping the riff-raff out of the fine establishment. I'm not sure how I got in. I guess the sponsorship filtration didn't really work. I had been at a performing arts camp at the beginning of the summer, but that ended and my parents thought I should be kept occupied until school started. I loved the arts camp more than anything, 'cause yes, I was a big nerd, but this place, with its rolling green golf course and views of the ocean, this was hell. Yes, every moment of the jump-serve-race-destroy day was an agony to me, except the moment when we went swimming.
My first day at the camp I was given a swimming test in the Olympic size pool. I qualified for the most advanced swimming group, which was a big deal. But when I realized how horribly bitchy the super-tan, super-rich, supers-swimmers were, I asked to be moved down to the intermediate group. The girls were nicer, and I decided that I preferred to share the company of kind people more than I valued the status of being labeled "advanced."
My crowning athletic moment came that summer on the very last day of camp, when the swimming races took place. None of the advanced girls knew that I was actually a peer of theirs when it came to swimming, and they had already decided I was physically incompetent because I couldn't execute a round-off-back-handspring in order to make our gymnastics routine to "Lean on Me" really sweet. So you can imagine their surprise when, against all odds, I came in first place in the breaststroke. I still have the medal in a dresser drawer somewhere.
But the days of wine and day camp are over. I am no longer forced to exercise, so other than walking, I generally avoid it. Except for the fabulous hula-hoop. I rock the hula-hoop. Rediscovering the hoop at some point last year was one of the bigger strokes of genius that I've had in my life. It is fun, it is free with purchase of hoop, it's pretty decent exercise and it is a fantastic way to make friends and influence people. Sure, it's no running-around-chasing-after-a-ball-while-knocking-into-other-people, or diving into water and moving swiftly, but it's pretty damn sweet. Once you get hooping, there's no telling what you can do. I do it every morning and every night, I bring it to picnics and break it out at parties. I like to spread the love of the hoop, and I think I am a pretty good teacher. So if you're looking for a new way to barely stay in shape, I recommend taking up the hula-hoop. It's fun, it's sassy, and it's inspirational. Can you say that about team sports? Sure, but I've already told you that I can't play them. So until I can afford a pool, I'll stick with my hoop. Some day maybe I'll even win a medal for it.
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