One of our college staff has been gone the past couple of days so I’ve been filling in with the school age program. It’s been nice catching up with the kindergarteners and first graders – hearing about their day and seeing how they have become such ‘big kids’.
Yesterday Eli showed me this cool boy ‘diary’ he got from Scholastic – it had a lock and key, he could write in it with a secret pen that can only be read with the secret blacklight. It was awesome – I wanted one, but I’m not a first grade boy.
One of the sections had a place to write personal records: stuff like how many push-ups and sit-ups you can do. He decided to do the sit ups. I counted.
Um, he did 71!!! Seh-ven-tee-won. My stomach was hurting for him at 30, then I was afraid he’d puke at 50, and at 70 I thought about making him my personal trainer. I’ve never seen such gumption. I was sure to tell his parents what he had done in case he woke in the night screaming with pain and they though it was appendicitis.
So, today I was with them again and told all the kids about his feat of strength, and they all wanted to try. Eli outdid them again, though. As he approached one-hundred-thirty five, I said, “Can you do seven more?”
He did. Twice as many as the day before. Good freakin’ grief.
Anyway, the point of this was that I was so inspired, I even tried some push-ups. I did six before another staff checked in and I stopped out of embarrassment. Yeah, that’s it. Not because of my weenie arms. Then when the kids started doing things like backbends, I was inspired to try one, and nearly snapped off my wrist.
Lesson learned. Exercise is for the young.
The very, very young.