Exorcising Fourth Grade Demons in My Silver Sneakers Exercise Class

I did not grow up loving sports. Or liking sports. Or doing any sports at all. This was before Title IX created funding for sports for girls; indeed, it was a time when hardly anyone engaged in any organized physical activities. There was Little League for elementary-school-aged boys, and then football, basketball, and baseball for boys in high school. That was pretty much it.

This was fine with me, as I was terrible at sports, as evidenced by my performance in my loathed P.E. classes. I have a memory that some teacher was worried about how hopeless I was at throwing and catching a ball. She said something to my parents about how physical coordination was important for academic success, so they went out and bought a Wiffle Ball, tossed it to me a few times in the back yard, and (to my great relief) that was the end of that.

The nadir of my non-athleticism, however, came in fourth grade. Our classroom teacher was enamored of a fitness guru named Bonnie Pruden. She would play Bonnie Pruden records every day while we gyrated to their beat. Of course, I gyrated much less proficiently than anyone else. One day - could this really be true? yet this is how I've remembered it for over half a century - she had the rest of the class stop in order to watch my flailing motions: "Look how hard Claudia is trying," she said in what I heard as malicious glee.  "And she still can't do it!"

Needless to say, I never tried to do any physical exercise in my life ever again. I do walk 10,000 steps a day with my beloved Fitbit. Once I tried a free modern dance class at the university, billed as being for absolute beginners, and discovered on the first day that I was as bad at modern dance as I was at Bonnie Pruden. So I went back to being a walker, period.

But now - ta-dah! - I'm a senior citizen. I have Medicare. And a Silver Sneakers card. The South Boulder Rec Center is just a fifteen-minute walk from my house. There is a Silver Sneakers class that meets there at 10:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And my dear friend Rachel loves her silver Sneakers classes.

Maybe it was time to try to silence the memory of that fourth-grade teacher's voice.

I've gone to four of these Silver Sneakers classes now; I'm just back from the one this morning. I think I'm twenty years younger than most of the other students, but I'm by far the worst at doing the exercise motions (which involve dancing around while holding a small ball, or a stretchy weight band of some kind, or two little hand weights).

It's not that the class is all that difficult physically. The challenge for me is mental. I just can't coordinate my mind and my body, especially if one part of my body is supposed to move one direction while another part is supposed to move in the opposite direction. I can't kick my left foot while pumping my right fist into the air.

I think I did a little bit better today, though. This teacher, unlike the fourth-grade teacher, calls out "Beautiful!" "Nice!" "Yes!" whatever we get right or get wrong. Apparently it's very good for the aging brain - or for any brain - to do this kind of cross-body motion. Maybe that worried kindergarten teacher was right that the brain and the body are not entirely separate entities.

I'm not going to give up this time. I'm going to keep on trying. After all, it's been fifty-five years now since fourth-grade. It feels good to move, to stretch, to bop along to the music (today it was Abba, and the Beatles, and the BeeGees).

So what if I'm the worst in the class?

At least I'm in the class, happily bopping along in my silver sneakers.