Mea culpa

This page is from the exercise manual we used in USAF basic training.

For the major portion of my life, I despised organized sports and exercise. A lot of my distaste had to do with a lack of coordination. Okay, maybe some of it had to do with always being picked last in junior high school PE class. Is there anything more humiliating? Maybe losing your swimsuit in a packed pool, but not by much.

In high school, my PE instructor was the school's football coach. A great bear of a man, he was an excellent coach. My school, Hermitage High in Henrico, won the state football championship when I was a junior, if memory serves. But in gym class, he was benign. When the class went outside, he turned a blind eye as a few of us retreated under the bleachers and watched the rest of the class haul their butts around the track.

Why, I wondered, did they do that so enthusiastically? Where was the joy in getting all sweaty and then going to algebra class?

PE was a required course for two years in college, too. The track coach, who taught my freshman class, was a stickler for group participation. No more retreating to a safe spot under the bleachers. He actually expected all of us to run around the track in good weather and -- dear god -- climb ropes in the gym in the winter. My ineptitude made the whole experience downright embarrassing.

So I stopped going to gym class. My theory was that I'd take it later ... maybe. When I was a senior? When -- if there indeed was a god -- I magically became more coordinated?

When I was a junior in college, I woke up one night with intense pain in my gut. After two days in Stuart Circle Hospital, filled with X-rays and much poking, prodding and muttering, my doctor decided it was my gall bladder. The muttering centered on the fact that nothing showed up on the X-rays.

So they trucked me off to surgery on the third day and cut a hole of major proportions in my gut. Sure enough, there were no stones in my gall bladder, but the damned thing had died due to a congenitally deficient blood supply.

The upshot was that I missed the next semester of college. Which, in turn, led to the loss of my draft deferment. Which, in turn, led to my being ordered to report for an Army physical. Which, in turn, led to my being drafted.

At first I panicked. Me? In the Army? Just as the Vietnam War was building up? Uh-oh. This was not good. So I rushed down to the Air Force recruiting center and joined up. I was no fool: There was no Air Force specialty called "infantry." If I wound up in Vietnam in the Air Force, I wouldn't be plodding through rice paddies with Viet Cong trying to kill me.

But to bring this back to exercise, basic training was a breeze -- except for the daily exercising. At first, it was grueling. Then, much to my surprise, after about four weeks of drilling, pushups and running, I was keeping up with my peers. I wasn't leading the pack, mind you, but neither was I lagging behind. TSgt. Dunlop stopped yelling at me. I lost 25 pounds and dropped three inches in my waist.

Four years later, I was discharged honorably and came home looking reasonably fit. I finished college, and, bless him, the dean said he'd waive the rest of my PE requirements because of my Air Force service.

For the next 40 years, I did nothing voluntarily that would make me sweat.

When I retired this year, I knew I had to find some sort of exercise program if I wanted to live long enough to really enjoy retirement. I wrote about my solution in June. In the process, I maligned a perfectly decent man. I called him "Herr Instructor." I accused him of wanting to assemble a road-show version of "A Chorus Line." I took out on him a lifetime of distaste for exercise.

So this is my apology.

I'm now taking that fitness class four times a week -- twice as often as when I started. The exercises that seemed tough three months ago are actually fun now. I enjoy the people I work out with, and, more important, I like "Herr Instructor" because he IS tough. He makes us work. He pushes us to improve.

So I offer my thanks to you, "Herr Instructor." I'll audition for your production of "A Chorus Line" whenever you want. Just don't pick me last.

And it might be better if you put me in the back row. I'm not ready for my close-up yet.