The Quest for Fitness

Tomorrow at two in the afternoon I have an appointment with a trainer at the geezer gym at the north end of town. I have to see her because I came to the bottom of my exercise sheet and there are no more blank spaces for recording my activities. To get a new sheet you have to go be evaluated. It's the rule, and to tell you the truth it's time. I need a different routine.

I started going to the geezer gym last October. Since they're part of a physical therapy office, I figured they wouldn't do my back any harm, or if they did, at least they could put it back the way it's supposed to go right away. Maybe. Before I knew I had these back issues I used to go to the hardbody gym, where the young folks work out. But Ralph, my trainer, left for another gym, and shortly after that I found out I wasn't supposed to lift more than thirty pounds. It became difficult. Some of the things I was doing might have been making my back worse.

Ralph was a trip, though. If he hadn't left I'd probably still be over there wrecking my back, just to hear his stories about the old days when he was a New York City homicide cop. I got such great stuff from him that I was seriously considering taking our training sessions off on my Schedule C. He told me, for instance, that perps with guns can seldom hit you. He was never afraid of getting shot. Guys would be standing six feet from him blazing away and the bullets would all go wild.

Except that one time he did get shot. "What was it like?" I asked him.

He pointed to a place in his side. "It was like getting stuck with a knife and then they put a cigarette in the hole. The bullet, like, burns, you know?" I thought that was great. That was something I could use. I didn't think to ask him then whether he had ever actually been stuck with a knife.

But the folks at the geezer gym are much more sedate. Nobody wears spandex. And working out is easier. There is a circuit of weight machines that are simple to adjust. You don't have to make the body builders come back and remove the hundred-pound weights that they left on the machines, because there aren't any weights, and there aren't any body-builders. Okay, maybe I miss them a little.