One day while I was at work, I got a text from my daughter, asking me if I wanted to go to a kick class with her at her gym.
Say what now?
I hadn’t been to a gym in over a year. I have a membership at the Monmouth University gym at the MAC, but because of a management reassignment, the workload at my job overtook my life this past year. My time at the gym went from four days a week to nil.
But what surprised me was that the invitation to go to kick class came from my daughter. For years, my attempts at trying to relate to my kids were met with the weirdest looks. I got the impression that they held their collective breaths every time we went out for fear that I would do something or say something that was embarrassing to them. They even made fun of me for using the word “groovy” in a sentence and for how I pronounce the words “machete" and "saloon".
All of a sudden, I’m thought of as cool by both my kids now. For example -- I enjoyed driving my son up to school every day (his high school is about 15 miles north of Long Branch), spending some quality time with him and chatting about school and life in general, until that fateful day when he got his driver’s license and began driving himself up there. I’ll be the first to admit – I miss those drives with him, even as expensive as they were getting with gas prices rising by the week.
Another example -- after my daughter turned twenty-one, she started inviting me to happy hour every now and then, where she’d hang out with her gym friends. It didn’t matter that I was just there to pay for everything – I was with her, we shared some laughs, and all was right in Retroland.
Now this – kick class at her gym. I felt honored. My wife had evening parent teacher conferences at work, and I wasn’t doing anything in particular. I was also looking for an excuse to get back into the gym, so I told her yes. The next thing you know, I get a Facebook wall post from my daughter’s friend Jen who teaches the class, telling me how much she’s looking forward to seeing me with Anne Marie that night. I guess good news travels fast.
So I get to the gym with my daughter and start off by doing about 20 minutes of power walking on the treadmill just to get myself loosened up before the start of class. Piece of cake, I’m thinking. How much heavier could I breathe than after 20 minutes on the treadmill?
We entered the studio, and my daughter starts giving me some advice. Her main tip was that the instructor was doing a mirror image of the workout for the audience, so it was best to follow someone in front of you so as not to get confused. My daughter’s friend Karen, another one of her gym buddies, was lined up in the front row right in front of Jen, who was on-stage. Even though I was in the back with my daughter, I had a clear view of Karen up front. For the entire time, I just followed her move for move, glancing up at Jen every now and then just to get some idea of technique.
At first, I didn’t have a problem following along with the class doing all the kicking and punching and shuffling and all, but at the 30 minute mark, the mind was still willing to continue on, but the body wasn’t. I didn’t pace myself too well. I was nearly out of breath, and muscles that I hadn’t used in many years were crying out for painkillers.
I can’t explain why or how, but I continued on, even though I could have done some serious damage to myself.
After every set, my daughter walked over and high-fived me for making it as far as I did. The next-to-the-last set was abdominal work, and I tried to follow the routine as best as I could, but by this time, my lower back had seen better days. I just did some side planks, and then we were ready for cool down.
When the class was over a few minutes later, my daughter came over to me, gave me a big hug, and told me how impressed she was that I made it through the entire class. Wow, another cool moment! On our way out of class, my daughter’s friend Karen who I had been following along asked Anne Marie if I had “moves like Jagger”.
Not missing a beat, I turned to the both of them and said “more like Keith Richards”.
(The entire Jersey Shore Retro Blogography can be found at http://longbranch.patch.com/blogs/kevin-cieris-blog. You can also follow Kevin Cieri's blog on his Facebook page, "Jersey Shore Retro" as well as on Twitter @jsretro).
