Mind Set Go

I remember watching or hearing an interview of two exercise masters.  One was Bill Phillips who wrote the book, Body for Life.  If you’re not familiar with the Body for Life program, it is a 12-week program outlined in Phillips’ book in which people can be transformed from everyday ordinary, as in flabby couch potatoes, into chiseled works of muscular art, lean and fit.  (The book never discloses whether that the look that you see, the before and after’s on the book jacket, actually occur in only 12 weeks.)  In 12 weeks, however, you can lose 26 pounds as I did in 14 weeks, when I also “put on” an estimated 6 pounds of muscle simply by eating well and exercising roughly 36 minutes a day. 

Yes, back in 2007, I was well on my way to transforming from a not too, too overweight being into something quite extraordinary—when it was all suddenly turned upside down by, literally, a flip flop injury in which I hyperextended my left big toe and almost took out a Maltese dog when I tripped on flip flops on one of three steps.  I’ll never forget the dog’s face or her little black lips as she ran like crazy to get out of my way as I barreled down, glancing down at the toe part of my foot that made contact with the floor first.  The what-felt–like-slow-motion momentum cast my body forward as my toes stayed planted.  Football players call it Turf Toe.

Back to the interview.  The interview was of two exercise masters, as I mentioned: Bill Phillips, and the other, was Jack LaLanne.  You may not be old enough to remember him, but back in the 50s or 60s, and for decades after, there was a short, extremely fit guy with a very compliant nice wife who would grace the television screen, (brought to you in full color, after being brought to you in black and white,) who would teach you to exercise in your very own home.  It’s hard to imagine this as a novel idea, but trust me, at the time, it was.  And that was him, Jack LaLanne.

Jack LaLanne’s exercise targeted housewives.  He would demonstrate simple exercises that housewives could do using his, as I mentioned, very compliant, seemingly extremely nice, wife as a demo.  Imagine a time when a home didn’t have a piece of exercise equipment—when, if there were weights, they were owned by a teenage son attempting to build some muscle. 

In the seventies, my first boyfriend was a runner.  I started watching track meets, and eventually I started running.  I was even gifted a pair of coveted new running shoes.  They were Tiger Onitsukas, the precursor of Asics, the company that bought them out.  Men’s. There were no female running shoes. Tigers came in different models, but I had the trainers which sported a slightly (and I mean slightly) elevated cushion under the heel.  These shoes, when placed on feet that had only known Keds or Converse sneakers or tennis shoes actually made one feel as if there was nothing on your feet and that you, too, could jump over hurdles, sprint 220s or really kick at the end of an 880.

I started running after I got those running shoes—often in the morning, before school.  There were people who walked back then, but the only runners one might see were high school boys who were members of track teams.  There was no girls’ track team at my school. And when I donned those magical running shoes, the ones that felt like air, I traversed the hills of my neighborhood, only to be stopped by passers-by.  For instance, I’d hear a car idling behind me, the gravel crunching under her tires as she attempted to travel at my slow pace, with a woman in the worst possible Southern accent yelling, “Naint-cy!  Naint-cy!  What are you doing?” 

“Oh!  Hello, Ms. So-and-so.  I’m running.” 

“Runnin’ where?  Why???” 

“To run.  I’m running to run.” 

“Do you need a ride?”

I was misunderstood even back then!  I’d get to school, and kids would ask, “Why are your eyes glassy?  Have you been smoking something?” 

And I remember that first day like it was yesterday.  The day I wore my Tigers to school.  It was like an alien had stepped onto those extra polished halls.  The crowds parted ways as if my feet held great mystery or carried asps about to strike.  No girl had ever graced those halls in anything other than Converse or Keds or those black and white Oxford shoes all the popular cheerleaders wore.  I was different.  And I liked it!  I didn’t care what everyone thought.

I remember the day I told my brother he might want to ditch his Pumas for a pair of Tigers.  He didn’t believe me, so I saved up and “bought him” a pair.  He was in college by then, and I think he is still wearing Asics (the brand, not the same pair of shoes obviously) now decades later.  (I’m trying to talk him into a particular brand of hiking boots now.  He’ll never look back—again.)

I also remember running in Boston in the 70s when I left my tiny southern town for the big city, to study music.  Those Tigers came with me.  But I attracted too much attention.  Cars actually stopped with boys shouting out what my legs looked like to them.  And… I stopped running.  This time it was me who attracted attention and not the shoes.

I knew there was a National Guard armory next door with a purported indoor wooden track.  I didn’t know if that would be safe for me or whether it would perpetuate my tendency to get shin splints when running on hard surfaces like the sidewalk or road.  And there were signs everywhere exclaiming, “Allston rapist.  Allston rapist.” Everywhere… and my dorm basically abutted Allston, the Boston suburb.  One day, I walked down Commonwealth Ave holding my high heels or my Tigers.  It attracted a lot of attention, too, walking barefoot in a city, whereas a street person or a Hare Krishna did not. 

I was chastised for having a southern accent.  For looking people in the eyes and saying hello.  I was blamed for every ill Southerners had committed.  Called a slut if I was kind and friendly.  Asked if I had indoor plumbing back home, in all seriousness.  I couldn’t get an A in English.  Not with my accent.  I faced bias that I could change, however, simply by changing my accent.  My running stopped, not because people thought I was different, but because I was scared, literally scared, that one of those car loads of guys might grab me—or I might stick out to the nearby Allston rapist.  My running days were over.

And so, decades later, I think I was rather due, overdue, to find a program like Body for Life.  It was 2007, and I actually met someone who was on the cover of Body for Life, a real guy who had taken Bill Phillips’s challenge and who had transformed his life.  The pictures didn’t lie. 

If you start the program on a Monday, you can exercise upper body Monday, followed by some sort of walk or aerobic exercise the next day.  Wednesday you’ll work on some lower body exercises; Thursday, another walk.  Friday, back to upper body free weights in the comfort of your own home.  Sat, another walk.  Sunday off.  The following week, you do the exercises in the order: lower, upper, lower on M-W-F.  And so on and so forth, flip flopping, pun intended.

I could do it.  It was organized and simple.  I even printed out the sample blank exercise sheet and put twelve-weeks’ worth of sheets into a binder and checked off and tracked my progress.  And progress I did.  Day by day.  Week by week.

And so, this interview between Jack Lalanne and Bill Phillips?  (Well, it wasn’t between them, it was with these two exercise gurus.)  First Bill was asked the question, “What is the first thing you do in the morning, Bill?”  I don’t remember his exact response, but it was something like… Well, I get up and assess what my plan is and then I start executing it.  He didn’t say exactly that, but as I remember it, it was something similar.  His response was so impressive that it inspired even an artsy, creative person like me that I, too, could ascribe to obtain and do it.  But then they asked Jack the same question, and his answer was even more awe-inspiring.

“Jack.  What is the first thing you do in the morning when you wake up?”  His answer was unexpected and simplistic.  He simply said something like: When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is… I feel grateful.

And there you have it. Wow.  That’s impactful. 

I remember wondering if Bill Phillips felt all of two inches high at that point.  It wasn’t a comparison of these two highly motivated, well-sculpted men, however.  There was room for both responses, both intents, both ideas.  We can, after all, embrace gratefulness amidst orderly, organized living and planning.  Can’t we? Can’t we see the glass half full?  Can’t we wake up in the morning and be grateful for what we have, to such a degree that the aches and pains and worries and cares are overshadowed by the feelings of what makes us grateful?  

I saw a dog yesterday (okay, I admit it was on a YouTube video) that did what my dog always did.  (Every time I saw my dog do it, I called it “Stretchy-front.  Stretchy back.”)  My dog, and most dogs… the first thing they do in the morning is stretch.  If asked, “Rat Dog, what is the first thing you do in the morning?” Rat Dog most certainly would have answered, if he could, “I stretch.”  Was he grateful?  Was he organized?  Did he feel pain?  Did he need the proper equipment or attire?  Was he suddenly overcome with monkey-minded, “I could do this; I should do that; I could’ve have done this; I should’ve done that” before his tiny rat terrier paws found the dusty should-be-vacuumed carpet as he rolled out of his could-be-washed dog bed?

I opened my eyes today, and I was grateful. I am grateful. When my mind started to stray, I wondered, what does it feel like hearing layers of birds for as far as I could squawking and calling in the day, all having awoken to one lone bird who seemingly got up first. hours before.  What does it feel like to look at the day with the glass half full?  Not only “What does it feel like…” but “It does feel like…” 

Would I return to that childhood pleasure of smelling my parents’ coffee brewing and my own grits or pancakes cooking or cereal clanging in an otherwise empty bowl?  Would I stretch out my becoming-chunky-calves, rotate my shoulders, wipe the “same” sleep I used to have—out of my eyes, taste my morning breath, or fill my lungs with oxygen free for my taking, feeling my diaphragm shuttling the used-up stuff out of my body?  What would my day be like?  Would I resort to flipping off people who stop to stare as maybe I could have or should have back then?  (Just kidding. That’s not me.)

Yesterday I took a walk in a cowboy hat, picking up trash as I filled up a bag full of garbage that had either escaped or was purposely thrown on this dear earth of ours.  I “stuck out” just as I did back then.  People here don’t wear cowboy/girl hats unless they are in a barn.  Probably not even then.  But now the cars driving by are filled with country music and when I walk into a Tractor Supply, a place in which I can’t help but resort to my old accent, and I speak with a very natural drawl, no one asks me if am a slut for being friendly, if I wear hoop skirts or if I make my own bacon… in all seriousness as they had back then.

What have I become… and why? 

That question actually makes me cry.  It brought tears to my eyes right now.  What have I become and why?

There’s room for both.  For your perception of me and for my own perception.  For organized planning and creative impromptu shouting and rejoicing and veering down paths untaken.  There room for you, and there’s room for me.  There are supposed to be differences, and we can accept and rejoice and be glad in them.

Years ago I had heard that a close friend of mine had gone off to college, double-majoring in music education and physical education.  He was/is a hero of mine.  An unsung hero.  There wasn’t a race long enough for him, and so he was a 2-miler back then on the boy’s track team running the longest race they had.  But he was really a marathoner.  His roots were from somewhere in Africa, and like the best marathoners of today, there was something deep inside of him that made 15-mile training runs seem like walks in the park.  I heard that that when he finished school, he came back to our little town and started a women’s track team at the high school.  I like to think that it was in my honor. 

I had begged my parents to join the boy’s team.  I was told no.  There was no place for me in a boy’s-only locker room.  There were no other females to race.  Well, Melvin, here’s to you, for starting that team and for writing that letter you did to our tiny newspaper, when you were mistreated in a neighboring town for nothing other than the color of your own skin.  My mother cut that letter- to-the-editor out and sent it to me.  For changing hearts and minds while becoming the sort of person I can only imagine you did, I laud you, even if we lost touch and I never got to tell you.  How does it feel when you ask yourself, “What have I become and why?” 

How much of what we become is limited by our own imagination or our own expectations?  If we know what to do, why don’t we do it?  I clearly know how to lose 26 pounds and pack on muscle.  Haven’t I overcome the flip flop injury now with some modifications?  So, what is it that limits me?  Is it what other people think?  Or what I think?  Is it really what I am not doing that is holding me back or, in fact, what I am doing?

Is life as simple as waking up in the morning and being grateful?  Could that be the root of it all?  If so, might there be room for both, for our ruminating minds and our wonder?  The sky, it seems, isn’t the limit.

There’s more to behold.  More to envision.  More to realize.  I’m in this with you.  Not alone.  Not chastised for me being me, for you being you.  Those tears are tears of joy, if you let them.

So write your poems, run your race, dare to be yourself.  Because in this world, it’s not a comparison between styles and left brain or right brain exercises.  We are whole, and we are good.  We have what we need.  Turf toe and all.