Over the past several weeks I have been going to physical therapy for a variety of aches and pains related to “multilevel degenerative changes” everywhere in my body you’d expect to find signs of getting old.
During one of my recent PT sessions, I noticed the young lady on the next table doing the same hamstring stretches as I, however her stretches did not look like mine. She had a gracefulness that I lacked. A limberness. She could get her foot up off the table without grunting. She wasn’t sweating.
Looking around I noticed a teenager, recuperating from a knee injury, jumping off a 4-inch-high platform and landing on both feet, sure and steady. And proceed to do it a lot more, never once pinwheeling her arms to maintain balance.
At once all my buried memories about school gym class flooded back. In all honesty, in my best days, I could not have jumped off a 4-inch-high platform once without pinwheeling my arms to remain upright.
I remembered with horror gymnastics. Doing front rolls, cartwheels and roundoffs while my classmates watched, waiting their turns. I could not, no matter how many times I tried, do a front roll wherein I ended up on my feet, then gracefully trotted to the end of the mat. Every front roll ended with me on my backside, legs splayed, disoriented, trying to figure out which direction I was supposed to run. Mercifully, I could do a decent cartwheel; but a roundoff was out of the question. Those ended with me staggering around trying to gain my footing, just before gravity took me down with a slap, the bare skin of my legs hitting the mat.
Or vaulting the “horse”? I can still hear the horrible “whoof-ing” sound I made as I bounced off the springboard and crashed mightily into said “horse.”
Rope climbing? First of all, why? Why was this necessary? The teacher holding the rope taut, the leap up to catch onto the rope with both hands and — the just hanging there, like a smoked cheese in an Italian deli, unable to move up and terrified to loosen my grip to move down. And then the burning in my palms as gravity kicked in and slowly dragged me down the rope.
I did show some promise in basketball, but no one ever recognized that promise after sixth grade, so I faded into early retirement. I also had a very nice serve in volleyball, but a bad habit of ducking if the ball came at me during play.
In high school, gym class had lower expectations, and left fewer scars. It was easy to mill around on the hockey field, holding a stick, as no one expected me to use it. I was sort of beginning to enjoy tennis until yellow jackets swarmed the court, and I spent more time swinging the racket at those than any ball.
On a recent PT visit, I had completed a stretch to “strengthen my core” using a very large exercise ball. Lying flat on my back, my goal was to move the ball out from under my heels and onto my stomach with as much grace as I could muster, handicapped by my large feet and narrow table. This was when I saw a woman standing near me, watching. Knowing I had an audience flustered me, and inevitably I lost the battle with the ball. It rolled off the table and bounced away while the woman just watched.
As I righted myself and went to retrieve the ball, I flashed back once again to being watched in gym class. Only the difference this time is that I didn’t really care. I accept I am older and will die someday without ever being lauded for my athletic prowess. I have finally embraced who I am — sweating and grunting included.
Sandra Natale Dietrich,
Huntington Station
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