Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Treadmills,
Exercise, Open Cars, Champagne, and Cigars
The panther-like litheness of my youth (cough) long ago expanded
into the, oh, prosperous look of Chaucer’s merchant, and so I have gotten into
the excellent but Calvinistic habit of well, treading along a treadmill every
day. That’s what you do on treadmills; you tread. The treadmill upon which I
tread is inside in the air-conditioning and under a ceiling fan, so there is
little chance of me being run over by some of the race cars here along Beer Can
Road and County Dump Extension.
Some people find exercise invigorating. I find it
tedious.
My old…um…legacy treadmill was pretty flashy in its time,
with red crystal lights telling me what speed I have chosen, how far I’ve wheezed…um,
walked…how many calories I’ve burned, and how long I’ve been a good lad each
session.
Tedious.
Television ads now show us show modern, high-tuned
machines that are so ‘way cool that they are not even called treadmills. Treadmill
– so declasse’. Sniff. They are given brand names that are just noise-labels,
like some cars, and feature computerized Orwellian telescreens with moving
pictures of different roads you can pretend to run on and with some really buff
athletes yelling cliches at you:
“C’MON; YOU CAN DO IT! YOU’VE GOT THIS! JUST A LITTLE
MORE! KEEP GOING! PUSH YOURSELF HARDER! DARE TO BE GREAT! YOU’RE RUNNING TO THE
FUTURE!”
And blah, blah, blah.
Nevertheless, she persisted with cliches on the sides of
made-in-China coffee cups.
If you’re going to exercise, do you really need or want
someone yelling bogus recorded slogans and abuse at you?
Someone who likes being yelled at while running might
want join the Army, Marines, or Navy. I was in the Navy and occasionally we did
time with the Marines, much to the embarrassment of the Marines, so there was
twice the verbal abuse while exercising.
If my mama could have heard some of the vulgar things the
mean old CPO and the mean old sergeant yelled at us she would have had some
choice words of her own to say to them, and they would have felt pretty darned silly,
yessir.
I have set before my, oh, heritage treadmill a television
set. While treading the road of life I watch DVDs of The Bob Newhart Show.
There isn’t much yelling, and although Bob and Emily occasionally jog or play a
little tennis, that’s about it.
In Chicago today, of course, Bob would get LOTS more
exercise in dodging the gunfire. Let’s call it nation-building.
In a scene from Chariots of Fire the candidates
for the Olympics jog down a country road as their friends in the pace car smoke
cigars and drink champagne while urging them on.
Now that’s the kind of exercise I can go for. No, no, not the running, the riding around in
an open car smoking cigars and drinking champagne.
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