The Ups and Downs of Fitness
As told by Hannah Wilson
My mom bought a trampoline. For herself. It’s situated in the middle of our living room, ominously close to our woodstove. Its not the enormous kind like you see behind a mobile home, but it is large for a somewhat small living room. The trampoline is technically called a rebound-air, but my mom prefers to pronounce it reboundER. It’s common for her to mispronounce things that are wildly new to her, (but ultimately old for the rest of the world). This device has been around since the 80’s, when I was a young thing and getting my groove on to the Milk Health Kick commercials. It seems the creators of the Rebound-Air felt very satisfied with their initial versions of the accompanying workout video, because no update was made when the video evolved into a DVD. The trick for my mom is to find someone to start the DVD for her. She can’t seem to figure it out for herself, so while someone, (usually myself), plugs it in for her, she strips down to her undergarments, which serve as her workout clothing. I want credit for being a loyal daughter at first by calling them “undergarments.” But as a documentarian of the event, I feel it only right to give a more accurate description of her attire. The “bra” is more like an old t-shirt fashioned into the faint suggestion of a support structure. The underwear might once have been roughly around her size, but over time the elastic has acquiesced to her haunches, and now miraculously floats about her lower regions. My sister, Nellie and I call it her Hover-Round underwear.
Luckily for everyone concerned, my father broke his toe just trying to mount the tramp. So his undergarments remain a delightful mystery, as he sits fully clothed in his Easy Boy recliner, a bourbon perched upon his ample stomach.
Unlike the paired down casts of current workout programs, Rebound-air boasts a group of bouncers that compare in numbers and agility to the Broadway cast of the Lion King. Also like the Lion King, the bouncers, (or bound-airs), come costumed in vibrantly colored unitards. The scrunchie-clad group begins with a “Health bounce”. For them, that is a simple bounce, where your feet don’t leave the trampoline, and there is no real bend in the knees.
Meanwhile back in my living room, the health bounce issues wildly different results. I should interject that our house is an eighteen hundreds farm house, which has been the fodder for generations of termites, and the playground for rot and mold. Since we lack the financial backing to really fix these problems, my mom has labeled the room “country chic” and covered hand me down furniture with very fragile antiques precariously positioned in ironic scenes, highlighting the taxidermied fox, Fosdyke, who holds court over the TV. As my mom began the health bounce, our living room started to quake and spasm. The bouncing is supposed to change every so often so that you are bouncing on one foot, then the other, then back to the health bounce for rest. This is, after all, just the warm up, but the leader frequently reminds you that you can stop anytime you want. My mom wore herself out after the ten minute warm up. Thank Almighty God. Sometimes she doesn’t even seem that tired, but just a little distracted.
When she wondered off to find her bong, the room was all mine to do P90X, a REAL workout featuring Tom something or other. The idea is that you do a very intense workout for 90 days, and end with a “beach body.” Before and after the workout you hear violent whispers of “Beach Bodayyyy, Beach Bodayyy!”
I hate my workout. For starters, I have to lie on the ground for the Ab-Ripper. The floor of our living room is covered in dog hair because we have six dogs (and one cat). When I lay down to rip my abs, Harlin Pepper, our bloodhound volunteers himself to keep an eye on me. If only he could. Despite his three facelifts, (an attempt to locate his eyeballs in that mess of skin), he has to tilt his head upward to get a clear sight line. The corners of his mouth let off a steady stream of drool, which mingled with the sweat forming on my brow. This grossed me out worse than naked mom bouncing, so I decided to try a little rebounding. I’m sorry to say that after all my judgment; at least the lady was very encouraging. After a deep breath I was congratulated. On P90X, the main sentiment is “BRING IT!” or “DO YOUR BEST AND FORGET THE REST.” The idea that everyday one should do ones best is repellant to me. It’s like saying, “turn that frown upside down.” For what purpose? I found I liked to be rewarded for each movement, no matter how elementary, by a rest period.
Feeling the vibrations in the next room, mom dashed in, and said “Oh YOU LIKE IT! Get off of it right now and come look at this.” She handed me the computer and said, “Look up the U tube.” I followed her mangled directions into a world of rebound-airs bouncing in front of the Seven Wonders of the World, and everywhere in between. I am embarrassed to say that we watched a fat hour’s worth of old people rebounding, Europeans rebounding to dance music, chunky kids performing a sort of sit bounce. It inspired my now-stoned mom, and up she went to demo a few of her favorite bounces. At this point I had strayed from the main purpose and was watching hilarious trampoline accidents. Just then, I see out of the corner of my eye, my mom do a sort of funny bounce, one boob flies upward, followed by the other, and in an attempt to save herself from falling into the woodstove, she does a sort of centrifugal twirl with the momentum of her breasts. I jumped up to grab her, and once we were both sure that she was out of harm’s way, which took a couple of slow-down bounces, we had a good chuckle over how close she was to a Joan of Arc style death in our living room. My mom and I share the same sort of horrific laugh that is silent and quivering, until we have to take the inhale, which hits hard at the back of our throat, sounding a little like a donkey. I have had the good sense to practice alternate styles of laughter so I’m not embarrassed publicly, but when the baby bear hears the mamma’s call, she responds in kind. So we squawked away till the dogs came to lick the tears from our eyes.
Then mom tried to stand up. It was at this point that she realized that something was wrong with her ankle. Never having done any physical activity apart from flag twirling in high school, an injury had never struck her as a possibility. Like a young girl who has sex before sex-ed and realizes she got herpes, my mom was bewildered. Here she had spent countless hours on “the U tube” hunting for the perfect no impact workout program, paying upwards of “two hundred and fifty dollars to the internet”, and making special arrangements with Troy, our UPS man to deliver it when the dogs were having their nap time, all to end with a product she would tire of in a matter of a week.
Both parents crippled by the trampoline, our family’s health kick went down the drain. It seemed rude for me to do P90X in front of them, since they obviously couldn’t even handle the warm up. Plus, I had grown accustomed to being complimented, and the sharp pointy muscles on Tom what’s-his-name just made me feel bad about myself. I didn’t want to “Bring It.” None of us did. So we “Left it.” We left the trampoline in the center of our living room, until a time when we see fit to get fit.
