Why I Go to the Gym

For those of you who remember me as a child and teenager, I was not an athlete. I was chubby, with the lightning reflexes of the dead, no depth perception to speak of, and the eye-hand coordination of a stroke victim. I was—and faithfully remain—a klutz. To this day it’s a miracle that I can get a forkful of food to my mouth without piercing my cheeks or putting an eye out. I had an absolute horror of gym class—and with good reason. In the NYC junior highs and high schools of the 1960’s the Phys. Ed. curriculum was repeated each year without variation. If you dreaded the endless two weeks of volleyball in 7th grade (and who wouldn’t if you had neither upper body strength nor the much touted eye-hand coordination?), you had reason to dread it again in 8th, 9th, 10th… all the way through high school graduation. Volleyball—along with softball, the uneven parallel bars, balance beam and vault horse, some basketball, a bit of tennis and any other forms of torture the NYC Board of Ed deemed essential to forging us into fine, fit adults—returned each and every year with the predictability of locusts. And each year the teachers robotically demonstrated the same basic moves as if for the first time. (And to their credit, the instructors never let slip the slightest hint of annoyance, boredom or disbelief that they were giving the same performance to the same unenthusiastic audience for the third or even fourth time.) This was back in the days of personal responsibility, success and failure. And if you weren’t good at what they were pitching, there was neither coaching nor excuses. You either got yourself motivated to roll over that parallel bar or you didn’t. And God help you if you didn’t. Failure was a real possibility, and the teachers were openly scornful of the klutzes in the class. For someone like me—who can barely make it across a smooth floor without my feet flying out from under me—this was public torture. I don’t know how I ever wore high heels as an adult, much less walked a balance beam as a 16 year old. More about the high heel years another time…

So it came as a miracle to me when, in my mid-20’s, I started to run. I started slow and easy, running, gasping and adding a quarter mile at a time. And suddenly, I felt strong and athletic. Now there’s a statement I never thought I would make in this lifetime. I might have absolutely no upper body strength. I might still have blubbery thighs. I would always be shaped like a pear. But with Don Henley’s The Boys of Summer pounding in my ears, I could push myself to run further and longer. Add to that The Doobie Brothers’ Take Me in Your Arms and Rock Me and I was unstoppable. Except for the traffic hazard I created by being deaf to the world around me… Not a great idea for someone as spatially challenged as me. Chewing gum and walking are a push for me. So running, listening to music and watching out for cars and trucks was not a good combo. And, no I don’t have a good story about being hit by a bus while running to the pounding beat of Eric Clapton.

What’s more, I realized I was as flexible as an Olympic gymnast. Gumby flexible. I could roll out of bed in the morning and rest the palms of my hands on the floor. I could roll myself into a ball—backwards or forwards. I could do splits. I never bent from the knees. There was no need to: I was so limber that I routinely bent double from the waist to tie my shoelaces, kiss the dog, mop up spills, scrub the bathtub.

I was still a klutz. That hadn’t changed. If I got on a bike, I overheated and fainted, or fell off or just crashed into other cyclists. In July 1979 Peter and I were cycling the loop in Central Park when I locked eyes with a cyclist coming towards me. Like moths to a flame, the other cyclist and I were on a hypnotic collision course. When our front wheels collided, I vaulted clear over the handlebars (something I could barely manage to do in high school) and straight into his chest. I suffered a hairline crack to the bridge of my nose. He must have sported a black and blue imprint of my nose and eyeglasses on his chest for weeks afterward. Peter, young and still in his leg-breaker phase of life, got off his bike and picked the other cyclist up by the throat. He was holding the poor man out at arm’s length with one hand, and winding up for a satisfying punch with the other hand. Peter wasn’t going to feel better until he put this guy’s lights out. (But I’m losing my focus… So let me wrap up and get back to my original point.) I convinced Peter not to beat the other cyclist to a pulp. After a few more incidents of overheating and fainting while riding, I decided to retire from my career as a cyclist. And after all, how many more times did I want to break my nose?

Well, at least one more time. Actually, I was out doing my morning run… We were living on 75th Street and York Avenue at the time, and it was 6 AM on a fine January morning. I was chugging down the avenue when I tripped and went down for a perfect three point landing—flat on my nose and the palms of my hands. Limping back home, I encountered Sal, our elderly Italian and eternally dour doorman, who normally wouldn’t acknowledge our existence. Sal took one look at me and started keening the Italian version of Oy! Oy! Oy! I hadn’t seen my face yet, and so this reception was not a propitious omen. I made it back to our apartment and woke Peter with, “Peter, I think I broke my nose!” He peeled open just one eye and regarded me for a second. “Yep, you broke your nose,” was all he said, and with that he opened the other eye and swung both legs out of bed. He pulled on his jeans and a sweat shirt, grabbed me by the hand and hauled me down the street to New York Hospital’s ER. He didn’t stop to so much as empty his bladder. He just marched, with me in tow. (Peter was always good in an emergency.) The ER doctor gave me a tetanus shot, turned me to face a mirror and gently asked me what my nose normally looked like. I may have started keening at that point: I was staring at W.C. Fields’ nose in the center of my face.

I had two black eyes for a week. Fellow passengers on NYC buses—the most hardened and blasé people in the world—did double takes when they looked at me. Friends asked if I’d been mugged. Stanley, the resident wife beater in the building, asked Peter if he had finally belted me. (Peter restrained himself from belting Stanley.) And when my father-in-law ran into me in the supermarket, he also thought the worst and announced that I was to come home with him. I had to explain that this was nothing more than another example of why I should travel around swaddled in cotton batting.

And so that’s why I go to the gym. Make no mistake: I’ve hurt myself plenty in the gym. (There was the unforgettable moment in Zumba class when I whirled around, landed at a funny angle and thought I had managed to unplug my right hip from its socket. Or the squat thrust that threw my back out for a week. Or the shoulder stand that earned me a month-long crick in my neck… The list is nearly endless.) But if I stumble on the tread mill and slide, face down, the length of the rubber track, there is an entire staff on hand to dial 911. If I drop a weight on my foot, there are people around to sort out the pieces and cluck with convincing concern over the damage. And I find that immensely comforting.