Tag Archives: exercise

Exercise is BAD for my health!

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Silver Sneakers Logo

Silver Sneakers Logo

So…I wrote earlier today about slowing down. I’m trying. But my doctor and Kay insist I not slow down too fast or I may come to a dead stop. Begrudgingly, I’ve started to take their advice. I joined the health club as a Silver Sneaker or something like that.

This morning Kay and I worked out before going to Costco to get the Prius’s tires rotated, a precautionary move similar to exercise – regular tire rotation will keep the tires from dying before their time.

The tire rotation appointment is for 1:00. It takes 45 minutes. We walk around Costco, get a few groceries, have a bite of lunch, pick up the car, load the groceries, start driving home, and remember we need gas.

It’s after 2:00 p.m. now, past time for my nap with Barclay, but I pull into the gas station, pull up to the pump, stop the car, do the credit card thing, insert the gas hose, and start pumping. Then it occurs to me to check out the windshield for cleaning.

“Are you okay, Sir? Are you okay?” asks the young man who’s come to my aid.

I’m face down feeling old and foolish. “Damn gas hose!” The hose was too high for leg muscles exhausted from working out. I had tripped over the gas hose.

Kay is oblivious to all this, sitting quietly in the passenger seat, her head down, traveling elsewhere in the universe, texting someone not lying on the ground next the car.

“What happened?” she asks as I get back in the car. “I fell. It must have been the exercise. I’ve NEVER tripped like that before. I told you. Exercise is bad for my health!”

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Feb. 5, 2016

You’d better not get sick!

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We’re sitting across from each other in the ICU Waiting Room after standing at the bedside of our dear friend Phil. Phil and I are old classmates and getting older at age 73.

Kay’s face is solemn. Sad. Pensive. Her brow is furrowed, the way it gets when someone she loves is in trouble. She goes deep inside,  dives down into the darkness to draw wisdom and courage, and comes back up and out when she’s ready.

She says something I can’t hear. I shake my head. She’s says it again quietly, I suppose, because there are other people in the Waiting Room. My inability to hear only serves to underscore the reality of our getting old.

After several more failed attempts to hear her, I walk over to her chair.

“You’d better not get sick!” she says.

I tell her I won’t because, unlike our formerly fit-as-a-fiddle racquet ball player friend Phil in the ICU, I don’t believe in exercise. “Exercise is bad for your health,” I’ve said a 1,000 times to Kay’s dismay. I’m more like Barclay, also in the Waiting Room, who, like Phil, looks fit-as-a-fiddle. (This is NOT the canine with the same name who’s waiting in the car in the hospital parking ramp.)

“Barclay, do you exercise?” Barclay’s head recoils like a boxer dodging a stiff jab, his eyes squint, his face grimaces at the thought. He slowly raises his right hand as if holding a spoon, opens his mouth, and shoves whatever’s in the spoon into his open mouth. “Ice cream?” I ask. “Doughnuts,” he says. “What kind?” “Chocolate.” “What brand?” “Doesn’t matter. Any kind. Doughnuts!”

Whether our form of exercise is eating doughnuts, playing racquet ball or working out at a gym, we’re all going to get sick. Some sooner, some later. It’s one of two things every mortal shares in common with every other mortal: we are born and we “get sick” (i.e., we die).

“You’d better not get sick!” we say with a smile. In the meantime we give thanks for today and tonight, the comic relief of the doughnuts, and the opportunity to love each other as we pray and wait for Phil’s recovery in the ICU.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, June 13, 2015

Verse – Diabetes Doctor

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“Well, technically you are obese.”
(This followed by a stunned silence…)

“But I’m just twelve pounds over my
ideal weight for a man my size!”

“Your Body Mass Index is more
than ideal: 26.4.”

(She is quite small, from India–
the size of a fasting Gandhi.)

“I just want you to be healthy.
How much exercise do you do?”

“I mow the lawn in the summer.”
(I don’t say on a nice tractor…)

“But now, you know, it is winter…”
(Her British accent is a winner.)

“Could you eat smaller meals? Less fats?
Much fewer carbs? And exercise?”

(I think of running up a hill…)
“Could you prescribe a better pill?”

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 26, 2014