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Loose bowels anyone?

I sucked in high school gym class… I was pretty athletic but…

… getting marked on gymnastics skills by Mr. Dodds, or wrestling prowess by Mr. Griffin was a diarrhea-producing phenomenon for a kid who had slid ahead a grade in elementary school, while at the same time being a slow developer on the physical front.

I was a mile behind most of my peers on strength, size, and *cringe*… genital-area development. I was a shaved lamb in a gym class of hirsute lions.

My brain dashed down the hallways of the academic classes at the same pace as the others, but my brawn dawdled in the areas that mattered to the macho guys and the cute girls. That old TV show Freaks and Geeks held a smidgen of resonance for this hombre.

I wanted to be in the upper echelon of athletic mastery, but my inner construction was delayed until approaching Grade 13 (yes, Ontario had Grade 13 then) by – as is so popular in today’s vernacular – supply chain issues.

Principal’s announcement over PA: “Sorry, hormones for some of our pubescent boys is held up on a barge from Southeast Asia. Your voices will continue to be indistinguishable from your female classmates until at least next year”.

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Fast forward to today and, while my voice may not resonate in the uber-masculine bass octaves, my inclination is to maintain my physique in a fit and healthy state.

A well-tuned skill set – as required by gym teachers in my era – is nice, but a satisfactory life demands good health via the pathway of simple, uncomplicated physical activity; prowess, macho dudes, and cute girls be damned.

I have a healthy competitive bent but really only when comparing within myself.

I’ve never approached becoming Olympic material *could it be because I don’t give a sh@t* since I won’t push myself to extraordinary limits to beat the next Joe.

I’m delighted if I can shave a second or two off my own 10km or half marathon run times, or, stay in the game and get an occasionally decent top-spin on my tennis shots. WIN-LOSE… Bahhhhhhh…

The thing that high school in my day (at least in my viewpoint) sadly missed out on was promoting the enjoyment of physical participation and overall fitness as healthy and desirable – a life skill akin to learning to understand the need to prepare a household budget and comprehending investments and mortgages, something else that was lacking in my schooling. I was left to find these life-essential matters on my own time and dime.

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It took a heart attack in his mid-fifties for my Dad to learn the magic trick that movement and activity was a secret elixir of health. He began a daily walking ritual that brought him a decent measure of heart health. If my mother had joined him consistently she would have likely lived for another decade.

Our personal histories, these high school anxieties, these parents’ health issues, play out in our minds and shape us. We have a whole lifetime of experiences that make us who we are… including those things that perhaps give you loose bowels too.

Regular physical activity is a habit, I think of it as a positive addiction. Happily, an addiction that should never necessitate a 12-step program (how about a 10,000-step addiction) for us.

When I’m walking, or swimming, or running… I hear a little angel whispering in my ear…

There will be a day when I can no longer do this… today is NOT that day.