I love deep-water aerobics. The back-story goes like this: when I was fifteen I sustained a bad back injury doing gymnastics. Because I’m me, I refused to stop doing gymnastics even though I was in constant pain, until I got a solid diagnosis and was told to stop. So, I trained and competed on a excruciatingly painful stress fracture in my L6 vertebrae for five months. When I came home from the gym I barely moved, but all I wanted to do was go back to the gym the next day. Dealing with the psychological side of being that injured was not something I knew how to handle, and so I denied that I could possibly be seriously injured until my mom finally found a doctor who told me to stop, immediately; that I had done serious damage and without serious rehab I would have back problems for the rest of my life.
Being out of the gym for ten months drove me stir crazy!! I started partying more with my friends, people I’d seen much less of when I spent my time in the gym. I also got medical clearance to go to deep-water aerobics, since it is no-impact. It took some getting used to, but after a while I really started to enjoy it and get good at it. I still love it to this day, despite the fact that most of the people who do deep-water aerobics are between the ages of 80 and 100. I love deep-water aerobics and I don’t care who knows it!!
Anyway, so today, after the dreaded conversation with my financial counselor at school (which I won’t get into), I went to the pool, only to find that the price of a class has been raised a dollar. Eff. So, I’ll be going to classes less frequently. That’s just what it is. But I digress. So, I get into the water and people look at me funny. This I’m used to. I’m thirty-one, am regularly told I don’t look thirty-one, and work out in teeny bikinis usually not worn by individuals over the age or 25. The tattoos and the unusual hair seem to grab people’s attention more than I would like, and I get some dirty looks, some compliments and some people who look at me like I should be on the six o'clock news, holding a placard under my mug shot for public urination or grand theft boating, or some such thing.
So, today I’m in the pool and I’m working out next to this little lady who keeps casting sidelong glances at me. She’s talking to a friend of hers, a man, and she asked him about his tattoo. He explained that he got it when he was in the Navy, in his youth back in WWI, or whatever. Then she looks directly at me and says “some people are going to wonder why they did these things to themselves when they’re our age,” sneered at me, and went back to her friend.
Now, wait a minute. I’ve had shit talked to my face before, but never by a sweet-looking grandmother whom I've never met and who looks like she should be baking cookies with cherub-faced children in a Nestle Toll House commercial. If I hadn’t been in the water, my jaw would have dropped. That bubby just talked shit to me!! I thought about saying something directly to her, like “if I lived my life only doing things I thought I’d be pleased with myself for by the time I’m your age, then I would never do anything,” but I didn’t. I respected my elder and kept my damn mouth shut. See?? I can do it. Other people just don’t notice it because if I’m quiet it usually means I’m asleep or simply not paying attention.
The day has continued to not just go downhill but spiral completely out of fuck control. Perhaps after I had a bubby talk shit to me this morning I should have taken it as a sign that I should go home and go back to bed and try again tomorrow??
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