Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 10, 1992 TAG: 9202080253
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
YOU'VE GOT TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS
I want to go on the record here as saying that I will get back to the basement and start the exercises again.I was doing five miles a day on the stationary bike - after I found this really big seat that, well, that is, you know, makes it easier on certain portions of the human body when you pedal for five miles.
After all that mileage, I was hopping off the bike and doing a lot of stuff on this machine we got at Big Lots years ago and has weights on it and it supposed to at least firm your tummy.
Then, calling out things like "Play Hurt!" and "No Pain, No Gain!" I was doing several pulls on the old rowing machine.
I was looking forward to the day when I could go on television and say: "I watched what I ate, exercised every day and lost 20 pounds."
I was gaining weight the whole time I was doing this. But that didn't bother me. I felt better when I looked at myself when I shaved in the mornings.
But then this disease, which I recall as having many of the symptoms of a combined case of the bubonic plague and pneumonia, came along after Christmas.
After I had used all the medicine and the fever was gone, I went back to the basement.
I tried to pedal the bicycle, but I kept falling off and hallucinating.
The tummy-firming machine started throwing me around, and I got dizzy when I tried to row.
I started to be afraid that I would be going on television to say: "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up."
Not having very much character, I quit these exercises, and I told everyone who asked that I was, as my grandmother used to say, "as weak as a cat."
This illness struck me in mid-January, and I have not been very good about returning to the basement except to check the gauge on the heating-oil tank.
I began to make excuses. If an editor suggested that I wasn't doing my part, I'd say, "Well, if you felt as weak as a cat all the time, you wouldn't be a world beater, either."
That's the way it goes in this business. A lot of editors think they're Joseph Pulitzer or somebody like that.
My helpmate said that without exercise I was a candidate for any number of disabling or fatal diseases.
"Well," I said, "I might as well go on to the Other Side. When you're as weak as a cat all the time, you don't enjoy life all that much."
I have now come to my senses and will return to the basement on Valentines Day.
That will be Friday, and if the exercise makes me weak as a cat, I won't have to go to work and put up with any editors the next day.