Exercise should be amusing.

I did mean to say amusing, not enjoyable. I've tried to find an exercise that I find enjoyable and I just don't seem to stick with it. I enjoy yoga. I find it relaxing and the corpse pose at the end is especially fabulous, but I don't really crave it. All through school I never did any organized sports, although there was that brief foray into gymnastics that my growth spurt put the kabosh on. (You know you aren't destined for a sport when they measure your spot on the uneven parallel bars as "two fingers past the last number"!) In high school, Kathy Phelan and I did say we were going to try out for the cross country team, only she kept that promise and I weenied out (I am truly not a hot weather sports person as my husband will attest to: ask him to tell you the story of my 2000 Disney marathon and hospital stay. He took photos of me in the emergency room. But I finished the damn marathon!).

So it was with a bit of trepidation that I went to my first Zumba class. It was at the local YMCA and I have to say that our teacher Mary was one of those rare people who are enthusiastic without being annoying and perky. She was funny. Zumba is a follow the leader class and there aren't many instructions. Let me clarify that. There aren't ANY instructions. So, get over yourself and dance. Hence, my amusement. I had no clue WTF I was doing. Fortunately, half the class was new. So most of us were wandering around and looking at each other and flinging our arms up at odd moments. And laughing.

There was a Latina girl next to me who was a really good dancer and I tried to watch her for most of the class because she could really move. That salsa move is pretty cool and I haven't got it down yet and there is something that she was doing with her shoulders, evidently genetically, I might not ever be able to do. But I'll keep trying. It will keep me amused for quite a while.


Here's a little video of a zumba class that gives you a feel for what a class is like. Not everyone is doing the steps correctly and not everyone has a perfectly shaped body. They seem a bit more serious than my class. But then, my class was also in the front of the Y and we also had these big ass windows and all these people were all looking in the windows laughing.....but I'm sure they were looking at someone else. Someone who was actually following the steps.....that's my story and I'm sticking with it.