Over the Years

About thirty years ago a group of people that I worked with at de Paul school decided to join an exercise class. I was the oldest member of the group but I was sure that I could keep up with the "young".Janet, the school secretary was in her twenties, and the others were in their 40's I was in my early sixties and had six children. There were about five or six other members of the group that we did not know. After about three or four weeks of classes mosts of the others dropped out. We worked out at the ballet barr for the first segment of the class. We did basic ballet movements and were so crippled up the next day that we could hardly walk, let alone use the muscles necessary for sitting on the toilet. One of the original classmates that I met was named Toni. She was a newly wed and very enthused about things like makning a perfect dinner for her husband for Valentines's Day and other things of that nature. We listened and made appropriat comments. Through the years other people joined and dropped out at a rapid rate. We vowed not to commit their names to memory until they had lasted through three or four weeks. It was not a 'bunny' exercise course. We did our routines to music and tried to give every muscle a workout. If you were not tired and sore when it was over you know you had slacked off. We spent Lent doing leg lifts to "Put On Your Easter Bonnet". We went through the whole song, when the lady sings near the end we were happy to still be alive. I think we did a total of fifty leg lifts by the time the song was over. We named our routines by the name of the music that was playing. "Sugar, Sugar", "MyGuy", "The Angels Sing", lots of Michael Jackson tunes,a lot of country-western tunes and many, many, more. We had some funny things happen during the years. One girl could absolutely not lift her legs up while lying on her back, so she solved the problem by sewing 'handles' on the sweat pants to help her pull her legs up. In the early years, insted of using 'store bought' dumb bells we would put nickles in a sock and tie the sock around our leg. It worked! We bonded together. We had lots of laughs, many tears and we worked through them together. When we met for the last time, we vowed to stay in touch. Guess what? We did just that, we meet every six or eight weeks and go to dinner together and since I am pretty much home bound we get together at my house and have a great time. Sadly enough, our studio and our blood, sweat and tears has been a victim of progress.Buldozed down, the building but not our spirits.