I'm not entirely sold on this idea of exercise. A substantial part of me despises running, for which I mostly blame public school gym class. When I was younger I used to be fast. When I was in second grade I managed the fastest mile in school, beating significantly a considerably talented Irish girl who would, several years later, lead our high school's track team to ... well maybe victory, I don't know, never really bothered to find out. The point is, I was once a fast little boy. On the soccer pitch one could even argue that I enjoyed out sprinting my opponents, consistently, throughout the entire game, however long that actually is. For some reason I remain unsure as to how long a given soccer match actually lasts. But again, the point of this aside is to provide anecdotal evidence for my once healthy appreciation for physical fitness and running about like a crazy man being chased by government robots disguised as hospital orderlies.
At some point during the interim, that being the years between second grade and my senior year of college, I managed to loathe nothing more so than swinging my arms about, pumping my legs awkwardly, and wheezing for breath while my mouth filled with an unpleasant copper taste. My assumption, having given this absolutely no thought, is that the constant threat of running laps in response to misbehavior, introduced during middle school if I remember correctly, have inseparably linked running and misbehavior in my mind.
During middle school I believe I misbehaved once. We had a road leading around the school's campus, leading to the school's parking lot, with just a single crosswalk, located inconveniently a block or two out of my way were I to intending to bike home at the end of a given school day. Being intelligent enough dodge the slow moving minivans filled with anxiety ridden mothers picking up anxiety ridden students after a shared anxiety ridden six hours of school, I would cut my kick ass green ten speed across the street, throwing caution to the wind, after making sure there was absolutely no cause for caution. Unfortunately for me, refusing to use the crosswalk was technically a crime, or at least crime enough for one particularly uptight security guard (you know, people who dress like police officers but aren't able to stay sober long enough to legally be allowed to shoot US citizens), who decided to round up the fourth graders arrogant enough to flaunt society's stupid assed insistence that a road free of cars is not just as much a crosswalk as an officially painted street corner. I returned to school, with several other students, and was told by an uptight administrator (yes, as you might have guessed, this is the origin story for both my distrust of police officers and anyone whose job requires being a dick and telling people the proper procedures for filing and requisitioning white out) that I had made some terrible error and were this behavior to continue my name would be read over the PA system, so that all might know I could not be bothered to use a crosswalk. I failed to grasp how cool that would have been, being a fourth grader, and instead I managed to cry for a while until my teacher (a career choice, unlike pretend-fascist and suit-wearing prick, I still do rather respect) happened by and assured us juvenile delinquents that anyone working in the building who didn't teach, use a mop, or serve chocolate milk was a complete jackass. I would leave school that day, about a half hour later than usual, assured that breaking silly rules would result in police intervention and public humiliation.
Now, back to running. At about this point in my physical education career we were to be introduced to taking a lap or two as a punishment for "speaking out of turn" or "generally dicking around." Even then I remember wondering how an adult could possibly berate us for not enjoying exercise the way his generation had while threatening the prospect of further exercise as a means of social control.
The result was clear. I was terrified of breaking rules, and as such I became terrified of running. As I grew older and realized just how full of shit most gym teachers actually are, my fear turned to resentment. To be fair, this wasn't specifically a P.E. thing. Having been terrified of just about everything as a child I found myself suddenly, as a teenager, able to turn my fear to anger, asserting my ability to control something of my world. As for gym class fear of running turned to hatred and by fourteen I was simply angry and fat.
Since then I've attempted to cure myself of this unfortunate mental connection. Years of martial arts training, a few fortunate bouts with eating disorders, and a general willingness to impress cute blonde girls by running my ass off during gym classes allowed me to strike fat from my list of self describing adjectives, leaving me simply with angry, which would fortunately dissipate with adulthood.
So, these days I find myself exercising every few weeks, doing some push ups, several crunches, and some light stretching. I guess the point I'm getting at is I was drinking coffee this morning staring at the bamboo mat on my floor and managed to convince myself to do about a minute's worth of sit ups. Can we call this a moral victory? Maybe.
