by JayasankaranKK
Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to be When I Grew Up – bumper sticker
There is a gymnasium in the apartment block where we live, so I suppose I belong there. Let me rephrase that: I don’t belong there at all but I go there.
I guess the Bible’s right, everything is Vanity. You don’t get my sort of body just like that. It takes years of neglect.
I admit it: I have finally reached that stage in life which Bob Hope described as “the time when even your birthday suit needs pressing.”
So, my wife decided to get me a physical trainer, to beat me into shape, so to speak. I feared the worst the minute I saw him: he looked like Sherman. The tank I mean, not the cartoon character.
Worse still, were the people patronising the place. They were, to a man, trim, fit and athletic-looking. I use the word “man” here loosely, of course. There is, for example, one woman who didn’t need to lift weights at all: she did that every time she stood up.
The muscly Rahul – that was the trainer’s name – even had his ears ridged in abs and getting into shape was clearly a Holy Grail to him. The man simply didn’t seem to care, or realise, I was pushing 70.
For the hour he was hired, he kept me on a relentless, non-stop pattern of exercises that, at its end, left me exhausted, panting and, despite the air-conditioned chill of the gym, soaked in sweat.
If you think about it, we are always being judged on how we look or comport ourselves. First impressions matter.
I remember the first time I met Rebecca’s father. I was playing a cricket game for the university when it broke for lunch.
Becky had invited me over for lunch and so I just jogged over as her place wasn’t that far.
But it still was some distance away. I had long hair to boot, so you might reasonably conclude I wasn’t looking my finest when I reached said destination.
Her father opened the door thinking I was the pizza boy. When I informed him of my bona-fides, maybe I should have expected the reeling away in shock, and the stricken look. In real life, he was a policeman and a no-nonsense one at that.
Looking back, not my classiest entrance perhaps. Alas and all that, but these things happen. It could be worse. Some people actually comment on appearances for a living. And it can be withering.
Take fashion critic Richard Blackwell’s description of Camilla Parker Bowles back in 2000. Camilla is now the Queen of England.
“In feathered hats that were once the rage, she resembles a petrified parakeet form the Jurassic age: a royal wreck.”
Fortunately for Mr Blackwell, he died well before she became Queen.
Mark Twain was more acidic than Blackwell: “Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I’d ever seen…I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.”
You probably want to know how my exercise regimen is working out. All I know is that I now have aching parts in places I didn’t know I had muscles.
WE