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Richard
Gere once cried in agony, "I'VE GOT NO PLACE ELSE TO GO!" The
movie was called An Officer and a Gentleman and during that
scene, when his face was screwed up in anguish, we all felt his pain,
didn't we? To imagine having "NO PLACE ELSE TO GO!" when it
would be so much easier just to quit; to give up the good fight and go
on to easier and happier times, why, who wouldn't want to? Why,
me, for one. I thought when I started this whole "gym" life
that it would just be for the activities that I was interested in:
cycling and Pilates. But then all the real glamour girls of the gym, the
ones who looked like cheerleaders on the ESPN championships, revealed
that the true secret of their toned thighs and calves was STEP. I
knew all about this step. Back in the early 90's, when my children were
small and my thighs weren't, one of the ambitious mothers at my church
decided that she needed to enlighten (and lighten) all of us non-toned
moms. She took money from the budget and bought like ten steps just like
those used in the real gym, and put them in the Fellowship Hall at our
church. "It
will be fun!" She promised, "and" (this part really
appealed to me) "free!" "Free"
just about fit my budget so I gamely brought my two tots to the
church nursery and tried a few sessions. The
principles behind step is choreography up and down (and around and back
again) on a step. It sounds easy, when you just hear about it, and it
really doesn't look too hard when you watch someone do it. However,
actually applying the rules and motions to my OWN body proved to be a
more daunting task than I had first imagined. I decided that it was much
easier just to stay home and eat and grow my thighs rather than to try
to humiliate myself further in the Fellowship Hall at my church. And
thus I missed the step movement. I like to tell people that I was fat
during the step craze, and that is pretty much the truth of it. It
shouldn't have mattered, all these years later, that I couldn't step
when indeed, everyone else could, but it started to really bother me. Take,
for instance, those times when a less popular cycle instructor was on
the old schedule at the gym. The rest of the girls, those lucky sassy
folks, just went to a step class instead. Not me- no such options for
the step impaired, so I gamely fought through boredom and back on the
bike; out of options and out of energy. And so, when the gym offered a
"Step 101" class, a class designed to help even beginners like
myself to learn the art of stepping, I signed up. In
hindsight, it wasn't the wisest move of my life. I mean, I had lived
forty-one years without ever really stepping, so another forty-one or so
wouldn't be too much of a wash without it, would they? But I was
determined to try, really try, and no one, least of all me was prepared
for how truly spastic I could be in the class. By
the end of week three I was pretty sure that I would be reassigned to a
new class, one where helmets were required; so often was I falling off
the step. At the end of week six, when a friend asked our instructor
Ellen how I was doing, she scrunched up her face and said, "She's
doing really great." Ellen's
eyebrows were so far up in her hairline from voicing the lie that
I had to laugh. I had kidded her the week before that she was my
"Annie Sullivan" and I was her "Helen Keller" and
should she actually be successful in imparting the gift of step into my
life they would have to make a made-for-television movie about our
ordeal, so stressful for us all had the journey been. I
have been pretty vocal in voicing my discomfiture of the class, and so
it was that someone finally asked me the words I had pretty much been
asking myself since the beginning: "Why don't you just quit; if it
is so hard for you." Spinning
on my sneakered heel, I contorted my face into a parody Richard Gere's
face in his famous movie and mouthed the words, "I'VE GOT NO PLACE
ELSE TO GO!" This brought about a few uncomfortable laughs; people
didn't know how to take the dramatic words about something as
inconsequential as a step class. The way I figure it, though, quitting
at this point would be equal to admitting that if something is
hard, just don't try it; and as my dad used to say to us kids, "I
didn't raise any quitters."
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