Anybody Care for A little Whine

Saturday, Boot Camp.
Time to set up the stations.
Put the jump rope here. It will be more painful that way.
Two laps, outside, jump rope; slip rope, stairs mitts, plates, fourteen stations in all.
Don’t stop.
Keep the intensity high and do the push-up station here.
Count the number and call them out.
Thirty-five, next time forty, next fifty.
Fierce says, “I think I am dying”.
“No your not”, I say, “Just push on through”.
We do the two hundred shoulders, the fast abs and Sparta thanks us for the excellent work and the healing.
Seems she is in a “mood”.
She warned us before the class that she was in "that mood” and needed healing.
Healing is accomplished by pushing everyone to his or her potential and beyond without anyone dying or walking out.
We all make it.
I then transition to a training session with weights and other strength exercises.
I join a group this day, all younger than me and watchful.
Sparta looks at me and says, “push-ups, fifteen”.
“I just did push-ups”, I said and immediately realized I was whining.
I try to avoid whining at all possible costs.
If you don’t want to do something, leave. Don’t whine.
If you are still whining and over the age of sixty then you really have more problems than I can enumerate.
And suddenly I am whining.
“I am whining”, I say,"I didn’t really mean to".
“I know, you very seldom if ever whine, it is good for me to hear this, it helps the healing.”
Healing, I am not worried about healing I am worried about face and maintaining it.
I do have some Ego.
I drop down and do the fifteen push-ups and feel flushed because I have stepped into murky waters and I don’t like it.
I do the squats, the dips and return to fifteen more push-ups.
I finally finish with the last set of fifteen push-ups and gratefully get to move across the gym to curls and arms presses.
The session ends.
Sparta thanks all for the good work.
As I leave the floor I am trying to decide which wine I might present to seek forgiveness for that last whine.
I am sure a Dry White Chardonnay would be the best.
Sparta might share some as I have heard it goes real good with Crow.

The Old Man Is Wanting

I have been weighed and measured.
I have been found wanting.
I guess maybe I came too late.
It seems Fierce has taken the field.
Sure I can’t count.
Sure I can’t memorize the punch sequences.
Sure I'm slow and occasionally purple
Now Fierce has the upper hand.
She is young, fast and aggressive.
She hits the mitts with precision and speed.
She hasn’t caught Ammo or the Ambassador yet but she has the eye of Sparta.
The next protégé?
The old man has walked the crooked mile and has the crooked smile.
He has the crooked jab and a really crooked cross.
His crooked, broken uppercut is a total loss.
So the old man with the little crooked smile, will continue on it seems, at least for a while.
And watch as Fierce runs the next hundred miles.

Oh Momma, So Many Questions

Big class last night.
A lot of punishment was meted out for slow learners.
The whole class paid.
Why is it, the guys can’t count past four?
The girls don’t have that counting problem.
Why is it the strongest looking guys struggle the hardest with the 200 shoulders?
Do they pick up too much weight?
Why is the running such a difficult task for some and yet others run with abandon?
I believe those, the easy runners, could run all night long.
Why didn’t May and Audrey join us last night?
Was the music too raw or did their advanced years keep them at bay?
What did the Yoga instructor say to one of the guys at the front of the line in the middle of the class?
Better yet, why did they laugh?
“Tell us all”, my old high school coach would say.
Where was Cheshire and Transformer?
Will we ever see the Mighty T again?
How much sweat have those mats absorbed?
Don’t they feel heavier?
Do the crunches ever get any easier?
When will a six pack or even a one pack start to show up?
Is the turtle shell the best I can hope for?
Where has Sweat Shirt Boy (SSB) been and why is he now back?
Is my new name really going to be dumbbell?
Or was it a missed modifier causing the command to sound like, “pick it up, dumbbell”?
Shouldn’t it have been, “pick it up, the dumbbell”?
Was it the lack of a comma, some other errant punctuation or a participle placement problem?
“I sure hope so”, said me in my mind as I type this.
All night the questions rumble through my mind as we jump rope, hit mitts, pound the heavy bag.
Sometimes they are funny enough that I begin laughing out loud.
I am fairly sure a number of the players question my status, “is he really all there”.
I have a counting problem, I have a hearing problem and I frequently still try to put the gloves on the wrong hands.
But in spite of these issues, I will keep coming back, keep pondering deep and not so deep questions and continually wonder if I will be able to do this when I am eighty six?