During my most awkward period of budding, I was the female
version of a 97-pound-weakling. I had sprouted rather earlier than my male
counterparts and, measuring in then at the same height as I am currently (some
twenty years later), was something of a sixth-grade Amazon sans any discernable
fibers of muscle tissue. I managed regardless to convince everyone that I was
hard-core by launching creative scenarios in which the illusion of my strength
was preserved without actually doing anything. It was easily believable, what
with my unfathomable height and all. Until the President’s Challenge.
Oh, the horrors of the President’s Challenge. In 1993, while
then-new President Clinton was eating his Big Macs in his baggy gray sweats, I
was being forced through the rigors of a prepubescent physical fitness
challenge given by The Man himself. Or,
at least, through his Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. Or, at leaster,
that’s what my Physical Education instructor said was happening to me.
During this challenge I was humiliated in front of my whole class by my radical lack of any strength
whatsoever coupled with the shivering vibrations of my scrawny forearms as they
tried, without success, to haul my stringy form up to the level of a chin-up bar
. . . even though my instructor was holding
up my legs.
But those were the days of flexible adolescence, when
bending myself into a circle in any direction was no great achievement. When I
wake up in the current era, it takes me a good hour to limber up. Everything snaps
and crunches, and bending at a degree tighter than 90 causes me to lose my
breath and go crimson. My collops rise out of my waistband like the lid of a
flesh colored mushroom, and my buttocks, once so rounded and pert, press
together like oversized cookies too close on the baking sheet. Revulsion.
In order to combat the slow demise of my aging body, I
decided to self-flagellate myself back to a youthful pinnacle of fitness via
P90X and the rigors of Tony Horton.
“C’mon boys and girls,” he calls to me from my Panasonic. “Make the last three reps hurt!” And I try,
joints squeaking and grinding, a Tin Man calling for oil. Alas, instead of
death by mortification, I now have a direct view of the stippling of my thighs
while downward dogging. Inverted thus, I nearly asphyxiate under the
unfortunate gravitational pull dragging my flubber gut into my esophagus. My
“soft landings” from plyometric leaps are thunderous, elephantine
clishmaclaverings that rattle the light fixtures and cause God-only-knows what
complaints from the gentleman residing beneath.
Nevertheless, I persist. I can now wrap my fingers around
the bottoms of my feet in a straight leg stretch, and can, with the aid of a
chair, do pseudo pull-ups that would make my 6th grade companions
less likely to verbally skewer me for my pathetic weakness. Thus far, the
regimen has been recipe for a fine collop reduction, though I shan’t yet chance
the Princess Leia metal bikini. Till then, I shall do as Tony Horton says, and “Bring
It.”
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| The Collop In Question |
