1. I’m Wrong

Since high school, that’s when I last did PE exercises,
I’m wrong, I could get B’s then but then get the Hell out,
Physical Exercise was NOT my middle name.
I’m the Yard Guy for our homes for 50 years: I rototill, Weedeat,
tote the fence posthole concrete bags, the wheelbarrow,
put in raised garden beds of railroad ties, the bags of soil additives,
the tanning bark, dig holes for the Agapanthus, the Hopseed bush,
the Bougainvillea. “NO,” says my Kaiser Physical Therapy Doctor,
“You don’t exercise ALL your muscles while working,
you must exercise ALL your muscles so you can work.”
Oh. Duh.

2. Balance Was the First to Go

Closing my eyes in the shower
to shampoo my hair and I’d
nearly fall through the shower curtain.
“What the hell?”
My chiropractor would tell me about
“nerve highways up my back”
and my inner ear
and nerve “communications” in general,
and the Kaiser Specialist for a copay of $35
would tell me about possible “light neuropathy” in my feet,
but Hey, why not just say, “You’re getting old
and need to exercise, Dummy!”

3. Upper Body Atrophy

Installing curtains when I was 60 was next
and my upper shoulders could no longer
hold my drill-driver at head height
to install wall mounts. “Well, this Sucks,
I must be getting old. Atrophying becomes a new word.”
And walking patterns: Straight-line paths
were the next to go: that’s NOT pretty!

4. Late Night TV

The Health Instructor on late-night TV
says you can avoid atrophying by regular exercise.
How many of these DVDs should I buy
and NOT watch them on the floor
in front of TV by myself?

5. A Poem I wrote on Facebook

Mary Frances Kelly-Poh
reads a lamenting poem I wrote on Facebook
about my crappy shape and responds.
She writes, “Join my Exercise Class at
Benicia Community Center on East L.”
I do, $24 for 20 visits at 45 minutes each. Wow!

6. D+ for Style, A for Effort

40-60 of us in the former
middle-school gymnasium,
I give myself D+ for style, A for effort,
clinging to my taller, black folding chair
at the back of the room, I fall left and right
while learning the simplest of exercise patterns.
“Two-pound weights also? No way, maybe
in weeks to come, ‘I have miles to go before I sleep,’
but am determined to fully function again.”

7. “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “The Rose.”

Krystle our Instructor is a Hoot,
she plays easy-listening music while we exercise.
The first week I really enjoyed the Beach Boys
when I needed them: “Help me, Rhonda,
help, help me, Rhonda.” And the second week
coming back to normal after 45 minutes of exercises,
we heard “The Rose” as sung by Bette Midler:

The Rose
Written by Amanda McBroom

Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower and you, it’s only seed.

It’s the heart, afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.
It’s the dream, afraid of waking that never takes the chance.
It’s the one who won’t be taken who cannot seem to give,
And the soul, afraid of dying that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long.
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong.
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snow,
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love, in the spring becomes the rose.

Peter Bray lives, writes, and works in Benicia
and has written this column since 2008.