Fitness Fairness

    My good friend, Shanti, recently mentioned in a Facebook post that she was going to re-initiate a push-up exercise program she had participated in once before and invited others to join with her in this endeavor.  "Why not?" I asked myself.  "I'm in, " I posted.  My wife decided this sounded like fun and informed me she also was in.  We were both pretty excited about this new adventure.  That was last week, when the dark shadow of impetuosity obliterated the 40 watt twisty bulb of reason.  I will now shine the light of reality on our actions.

    Reality check number one: I am an old guy.  I blew past my 60th birthday months ago.  Shanti is the same age as my son.  Granted, the program has built-in adjustments for age and relative strength, but things are just more difficult for the decrepit.  When I posted that I had completed my initial assessment and established a baseline in the medium range for my old-guyness, she replied that she was going to start on week three because she was so advanced!  That's right, suckered me in, then started the bragging.  If there was money on the line, I'd have to accuse her of being a push-up shark.

    Reality check number two: I'm a guy, so I have to do the regular push-ups.  I'm a stickler for following the rules, so I have to do them correctly.  My wife is doing those modified, wimpy knee push-ups that reduce the lifting load by 50%!  She also insists that we do these at the same time; some kind of "togetherness" thing, she said.  So, I began my first set of ten.  While I was straining and groaning, concentrating on overcoming the agony coursing through my arms and chest, she was working on her nails, reading her Kindle and Skyping.  When I got to my last three she plopped down on the floor and knocked out her required three.  While she returned to her primping, reading and socializing I lay on my back moaning and gasping for air.  A minute went by and we repeated this unjust scene.  I'm a little slow to catch on, but I now believe this is not so much about "togetherness" as gloating.  Yesterday, as I groaned and flopped face down on the floor after my second set of 15 she, with no outward evidence of having strained herself while completing her grueling set of 5, informed me that I was "being over dramatic."  Is that what they are calling near death from exhaustion these days?

    Reality check number three: I have actually gained a couple of pounds since beginning this challenge.  That's two more pounds of weight to be lifted each push-up. 

    Reality check number four: This is only the end of Week 1.  I just got a look at the schedule for Week 2.  While I am chalking up push-ups in the double digits, the dear, sympathetic, supportive wife will reach her point of exhaustion while getting all the way up to 7 wimpy-style push-ups.  I predict my groaning will continue, but her disrespectful behavior toward her near totally exhausted husband will multiply at a furious rate.

    Should you, in a weak moment impetuosity, decide to try out this program, you can find it at the address below.

http://hundredpushups.com/index.html

P.S.  Thanks, Shanti.  Hope you will join us soon, after we catch up to your advanced stage of farm-woman strength. 

Disney Valuable Merchandise

    Two adult and two child tickets to Disney On Ice = $102.25.  Parking = $12.00.  Refreshments = $40.00.  Souvenirs = $30.00.  The excited, amazed, joyful looks on a 7- and 5-year-old faces -= $184.25!  Sorry, I just can't abide the "priceless" answer.

    We have been wanting to do something like this for some time, and finally took the plunge this past Saturday.  Now, don't get me wrong.  We thoroughly enjoyed being with these two grandchildren and are glad we were able to treat them to this special event.  Also, before I actually begin my tirade, let me say I am 100% behind free enterprise, capitalism, entrepreneurial ambition and profit-making in our glorious republic.  However, I do have something to say about the atmosphere created at this event and the resulting effect it has on me.

    Before we finished our walk from the parking lot to the door our young ones became aware of the first of many attempts to separate us from our money by appealing to the weaknesses of the small child's still-developing sense of value.  How could we not purchase a keepsake program that came with a pair of mouse ears?  Easy.  We just walked on by. 

    Between the door and our seats we were forced into a bottleneck formed by the temporary sales displays conveniently built with the first row of…valuable merchandise… just about at the normal height of an 8-year-old child.  The bottleneck grew narrower as people lined up in front of those sales areas to buy that merchandise.

    Arriving at our seats in the upper deck we were pleasantly surprised by two observations.  In spite of being in the upper deck, these were pretty good seats; facing the front of the ice area and free from visual obstacles.  But even more pleasing was our discovery that the roving hawkers of… valuable child merchandise… seemed to be abundant in the lower levels and quite sparse in the upper deck.  We surmised that they knew the people down there spent much more money for their tickets and might be more willing to spend even more on their…valuable merchandise.

    After a brief announcement concerning the upcoming moments of darkness that would last only a few seconds, the show began.  Through child eyes it was a spectacular sight!  Lights, costumes, lovely princesses!  There were handsome Disney characters lifting these luminous ladies high above their heads while effortlessly gliding across the ice.  But through adult eyes that have become accustomed to Disney perfection, the scene was quite different.   Where glitter and action abounded, perfection was absent.  Characters often began their lines in the relative darkness because the spotlight operators kept missing their assignments.  The choreography was planned well, but executed poorly.  I sat there wondering if these skater-actors were incompetent, bored or exhausted.  I imagined they all had aspired to Olympic competition, but fell short with inferior skills.  I also thought how easy it might be to become bored performing the same show day after day, week after week.  And I know how physically demanding all that skating is, and thought they might just need a few weeks off to regain their strength and their focus.

    Then it was back through the bottleneck, a condition I believe was deliberately created to force our young ones into even closer proximity to all that…valuable merchandise.   Have you ever been to a store where the salespeople acted like you were bothering them?  Well, they would never make it to the front line of…valuable merchandise…sales at a Disney event.  These guys were aggressively getting people's attention, getting the…valuable merchandise…right in front of the children's faces, excitedly appealing to the imaginations of the little underdeveloped minds staring longingly at the brightly colored, exciting…valuable merchandise…at their eye levels.

    In short, I was not impressed enough to want to go again very soon.

    Ah, the memories; wonderful, but not quite priceless.  

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The Times, They Are A'Changin'

    How many songs have been written about change?  Before doing a web search, I thought of Judy Collins' Circle Game, Bob Dylan's The Times, They are A-Changin'," and Ricky Nelson's Garden Party. (Wow, am I showing my age now!)   After a search I discovered dozens of songs I had never heard.

    James Taylor wrote and sang a song about going back to visit his childhood home and finding it had changed so much he could no longer feel like he was home while there.  It is a song entitled Copperline.  After describing the sights and sounds and smells he remembered from his childhood, he sings, "I tried to go back, as if I could; all spec houses and plywood.  Tore up and tore up good, down on Copperline.  It doesn't come as a surprise to me, it doesn't touch my memory."

    Most of us have many fond memories of at least portions of our childhoods that are brought to life by a sight, a sound or a smell.  Every time I smell leaves burning I remember my boyhood days in Syracuse when autumn leaves were raked into piles all over the neighborhood and set to smoldering by dads assigned to weekend yard duties.  Whenever I hear the theme song from Midnight Cowboy my mind takes me back to a specific day, driving down a country road outside of Grass Valley on a blue-sky spring afternoon.  I don't particularly like that song, but it evokes that memory without regard to my musical tastes.

    My son returned from college one day to find a modern medical office and pharmacy had been built on a former dirt corner of the local supermarket parking lot.  He was heartbroken.  As a boy he had ridden his bicycle across that dirt lot many times a day, many days a year.  That experience would only persist in his mind from then on.

    Change is coming, or should I say continuing, in my part of the world.  At least, I am pretty sure a big change is on the way in the form of a new traffic light that is going in on Highway 88.  If my suspicion is confirmed, this will make an even dozen in the county.  I know, I know, you may live someplace where there are a dozen lights between your house and the grocery store.  But I don't live in a big city.  When I moved to Amador County in 1980 there were no traffic lights (I never considered  the ones that control alternating one-way traffic on the dam to be legitimate traffic lights).  This is somewhat disturbing to me.  I know change is not always bad, but I liked this county the way it was in 1980.  I liked being able to get mail addressed to me with nothing but my name and the city name on the envelope.  I enjoyed knowing most people's names, or at least their faces.  I thought the little volunteer fire department and two-person police force were wonderful Mayberry-type fixtures.  And I bragged to my friends in other parts of the country that I lived in a county with no traffic lights.  I have it on good authority that my own town (it's officially a city, but I still like to think of it as a town) is also on target for getting its first traffic light.  If I had the ability, I would consider moving.  But I don't, so I won't.  If I had the ability to turn the clock back, I'd be tempted, but I believe I would decline that option as well.  As much as I think I enjoyed those good ol' days, I'm not sure they would be as great the second time around as my memory would have me believe.

    Steve Martin wrote a song, My Daddy Played the Banjo in which he lovingly recounts his boyhood days of listening to his father play the banjo on warm, summer nights, and then learning that art from him.  In typical Steve Martin form, the end of the song reveals that all of that was just a lie he was telling.  Then he makes a statement that is true of so much of the nostalgia we cling to, "Now the banjo takes me back to the foggy days when memories of what never was become the good ol' days." 

    I believe it was the Greek philosophy Heraclitus who said or wrote, "Nothing endures but change."  I have to disagree with the exclusive "nothing" while agreeing that change certainly is one thing that cannot be stopped.  We are somewhat fickle about that, aren't we?  We love to fondly remember the way things were, but we would find it repulsive to eliminate change from our lives completely.  How sad it would be if babies didn't grow up, if we didn't increase our knowledge, if we didn't become better people, or if our relationships didn't develop into deeper relationships.  These are all changes we treasure. 

    So, I guess I will hang on to my memories of a traffic light free county; probably think about it every time I am stopped at the new controlled intersection, but I will not allow myself to become bogged down in the muddy memories of time gone by.  I have too much to do today.

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A Norwegian Grandmother

    My 90-year-old father-in-law wrote a little periodical for his grandchildren called The Tarpaper Shack.  He wanted to pass along his legacy of wisdom about living for God in a Godless world.  Some of his favorite thoughts were: "Love chooses to understand."  "Choose off the top shelf."  "Marry up."  Ask yourself, "Is this young man you're about to marry God's answer to prayer for you?"  "Find someone who can fly with you."  "My dad was an arguer.  He had to win every argument with my mother.  So, my dad won the argument, but my mother won me!"  Some of these thoughts are his own, some he "borrowed," but all are food for thought.

    I thought I would pull out the following thought and share it with you.  You see, I know two young ladies who are about to get married within weeks of each other and I believe they and many others could benefit from my father-in-law's insights.  So, the rest of this post is filled with his words, not mine.  After reading these thoughts, make a comment.  He has always thrived on conversation, gentle disagreements and the sharing of thoughts.  If something in here upsets you, take a deep breath, then tell the rest of us why.  If something prompts a different possibility, let the rest of us in on it.  So, here's Papa's October 3, 1976 missive entitled Norwegian Grandmother.

Marianne Gregine Ingebrigtsdt

     I never saw my mother's mother but I got to know about her from my mother's accounts of life in their small village in the north of Norway near Tromso.  Life was hard for those poor farmers as they tried to eke a livelihood out of  reluctant and rocky soil.  Mom tells of a typical day at their house.  Her mother got up very early in the morning, roused the teenage girls, built the fires and put on the vegetables to cook in big pots for the livestock.  Then Mother and the girls carried the fodder down to the barn which had rock walls three feet thick to keep out the biting cold.  All of the cows, and even the sheep, had names and the children could recognize each one.  After the cattle and sheep were fed, Mother and the girls milked the cows and took care of the milk.  Then they went back up to the house to start breakfast and put on the coffee.  When breakfast was about ready and the aroma of coffee filled the house, Mother went in to the bedroom to rouse the master and and ask him if he'd care to come to breakfast!

      Can't you just imagine the screams of laughter or outrage that would erupt from some of the over-emancipated girls of our day?  "Slavery!" they would cry.  "Male chauvinist pig!" they would shout.  They would leave no stone unturned to discover a label for that lazy male who stayed in bed while his wife and daughters milked those cows!

        But as Mama told about her mother and herself as she did those chores it was without rancor or complaint.  She didn't see it as unfair or cruel.  Grandma loved and respected her husband, so did all the children growing up in that well-ordered home.  Grandma, far from protesting about her sad lot in life, was proud of her family; proud of the household that she ran so well.  She had found a man worth loving and she loved him.  She would have fought the Philistines for him, so she didn't mind working hard for him.  Incidentally, Grandpa was no lazy lout.  He put in twelve or more hours a day in hard labor in the fields and still had time for storytelling, reading the Bible, and praying.  There was lots of laughing, eating and singing (on key) in that home.  The hard work was just a necessary part of life in those days.

        I don't waste my time commiserating about my grandma, now long gone--I see a sorrier sight.  I see empty-headed and empty-hearted wives of today for whom my heart really aches.  They don't have a family like Grandma had.  They don't have a man who they can respect, work for and fight for like Grandma had.  I think they would gladly give up some of their freedoms (mostly mythical) and luxuries for a little bit of decency and order in their lives.  I think that what they really crave is appreciation and respect.  Grandma didn't have electric lights, luxuries and ease, but she had a home where love prevailed and joy was known.

         Long before I read Proverbs 31 and understood what it said about that virtuous woman with all those abilities, I sensed its truth in the stories my mother told me about Grandma.  What's the matter with woman today who do nothing but complain?  Such malcontents miss the thrust of that competent and happy woman in Proverbs 31.  Is she the abject slave or her husband?  Is she supporting a lazy incompetent?  Not at all!  That woman in Proverbs and my mom and others very close to me have discovered what all these miserable modern women are still looking for in a futile search.  When you love someone in the deepest recesses of your heart, no work is too hard, no risk is too great, no investment too costly, no word too eloquent or tender to convey the love of your heart!

        Grandma in Norway, I never knew you.  But you'd be proud of some of the girls I know who sprang from your loins.  They still don't mind working very hard.  They're still proud to run a well-ordered household, and they still don't mind rousing the master to inform him that breakfast is ready!

        And what great reward do they get for that great effort?  Just a word from Daddy once in a while, "Mommy, you're the greatest!"