Stuff and Stuff About Other Stuff

There is a myth in our society.  Actually, there are a lot of myths in our society….but only one that I’ve come to notice and scrutinize lately.  The others I don’t really give a damn about at the moment.  In fact, I don’t really care about most of them, but I guess I feel like writing right now so here goes nothing.

I call it: The Myth of Exercise.  Now don’t be confused; exercise is not the myth.  Exercise is a good and wonderful thing, we should all do, ya-dee-ya-dee-ya.  However, the myth is RELATED to exercise (kinda like I’m related to Daniel Boone by generations apparently, but unlike my relation to Daniel Boone, right now, I give a damn about this myth).

So here’s the sitch: You’re thinking about your exercise program.  You want to exercise, you know it makes you feel good, look good; there’s good coming out the wazoo. 

So, you says to yourself, if I am gonna make this exercise thing work, I need to start doing it.  But (nope, you’re already on the wrong track) I can’t do it right now or during lunch breaks because I’ll get sweaty and I can’t go to work sweaty (oops, you took another wrong turn) And I’m gonna need some good running shoes/biking shoes/yoga shoes/push-ups shoes/Scrabble shoes (ha! Craptown USA ahead!).  And I’ve got to have something comfortable to work out in because I don’t want my clothes to get stinky (uh oh, you’re running out of coal (yep, this is an old-fashioned train, bitches)).  And I can’t go after work because I’ve got to entertain the kids before they go to bed (uh-oh, you’re boiler just blew! [coal trains have boilers, right?]).

So you end up determining that best time to workout is at 6am before you get the kids up and go to work, which I’m sorry, but if you are a human being, this only happens for MAYBE a week.  That’s right, I am saying that you folks that actually get up at 6am to work out are NOT HUMAN.  Or, in your language, DCPOWIEM(*@IOJ.

Blame it on commercialism, Fortune 500 companies, Global Warming, gravity, whatever you want but the fact is we sure make working out a hell of a lot harder than it is.  Think about our intellectual forefathers, the cavemen (ahem, and cavewomen).  You know what exercising was to them?  “Me awake.  Food.  Animal.  Catch.”  Of course, we don’t have the benefit of having to chase down our food anymore (unless you count the bitchy blonde chick at wal-mart the other day who tried to snag the last bag of frozen chicken wings.  That’s right, I gots me my chicken, I gots me a workout, AND I gots to see a toehead go bowling in the bakery section).  And computers have ensured that we sit on our asses at least 10 hours per day.  But seriously, we REALLY think we have to have all this “stuff” to do a simple work out?

Case in point: Kids.  I tell you, it does not MATTER where I take my daughter.  She will climb on, jump in, push over, roll around in anything she finds.  This kids is so creative that she now looks forward to going to the grocery store so she can play on the bar thing in the parking lot that holds the shopping carts (I believe that is “officially” what it is called).  So let’s take a little lesson from this, eh?  Give a little credit to the youngins? 

I gave it a try the other day.  Alyssa wanted to go to the park, Chris wasn’t home, and I had Ascher too so the three of us walked to the park nearby.  When we got there, Alyssa headed joyously to the swings and I got ready to settle my little (sigh, ok, it’s HUGE these days) butt on a parking bench to watch the baby.  Then I thought, “there’s a nice big park here with a nice little trail that wraps nicely around the nice little playground.  Why don’t I take a jog?”.  So I hauled this little [gigantic] ass off the bench, got behind the stroller and jogged around the park 4 or 5 times.  And guess what.  I DID IT WITHOUT A JOGGING STROLLER.  In flip-flops.  And normal everyday clothes.  And no ponytail.  And the flu, cancer, and a broken sternum.  It's not like I ran an Olympic mile or anything (what the hell is an Olympic mile?!  It's like I'm making this crap up as I go!), but it was still something.

And the most amazing part?  MY LIFE DIDN’T END.  Seriously!  I thought for sure people would look at me funny, children would shout profanities, animals would prepare for attack, and the axis of the world would begin to fold in on itself – but none of these things happened!  I did get a little sweaty though.  But here’s kind of a funny thing about sweat: IT DRIES.  I thought, Good God, this changes everything!  You might start to see adults playing on the playground, grown men jogging around the store as they do their shopping (or running away from me if they were in the wrong product aisle at the wrong time), women making laps in the parking lot in dresses and heals while waiting for their prescription (most likely for some mental illness since women are frackin crazy), grown adults disturbing the peace of the office by WHEEZING.  CHAOS!!

Oh wait, this already happens.  It’s called Parkour.  The most awesome frackin sport I’ve ever heard of.  No, I’m not going to tell you what it is.  You’re just going to have to put down the Universal Remote, get off the goose down couch, walk over to the laptop you left on the kitchen counter next to your cream puffs, and look it up your own damn self.

Oh, and if any of this sounds sexist, judgemental, or otherwise rude, you might want to double-check where you left your last bag of potato chips because I think you got one or two stuck up your...well, you know, because most likely all those offensive parts describe me.

We all gotta start somewhere, right?

Oh, and I love Bruce Willis.