Aunt Erma's Cope Book (5 page)

the complete book of jogging

jim FIXIT'S legs were the first thing I saw every morning and the last thing I saw every night.

They were on the cover of his best seller. The Complete Book of Jogging. For the past two years my husband had followed the gospel according to St. James Fixit. He ate Jim's cereal, took Jim's warming-up exercises, adopted Jim's form, ran with Jim in races whenever he could, and occasionally—when he thought no one was looking—lived out his fantasy by posing his legs in front of the mirror like the legs on the cover of the book.

When he wasn't poring over the pages of the book, it was on the nightstand by our bed next to the liniment.

My husband knew how I felt about physical fitness. I hated skiing or any other sport where there was an ambulance waiting at the bottom of the hill. As a golfer with a slice, I found the game lonely. And it became apparent to me long ago that if God had wanted me to play tennis, He would have given me less leg and more room to store the ball.

Despite this, I knew it was only a matter of time before he pointed out that my inner peace had brought me outer fat and tried to convert me to jogging.

Joggers were like that. In no other sport were the participants so evangelistic. They talked of nothing else.

The children of runners would huddle in groups and whisper: “Who told you about jogging? Your mother or your father? Or did you learn about it in the gutter?”

Whenever a group of four would gather, someone would open the conversation with “Where were you and what were you doing when you heard that Bill Rogers won the Boston Marathon? I remember I was washing my hair when the bulletin came over the news.”

One night I was dancing with one of my husband's friends when he whispered, “Sure, I could go jogging with you this weekend, but would you respect me in the morning?”

They bragged about their blisters, their Achilles tendonitis, their chondromalacia of the knee, their foot bursitis, shin splints, pulled leg muscles, back pains, and muscle cramps. Their stories made you sick you missed World War II.

I watched the joggers every morning from my kitchen window. They looked like an organized death march as they ran by gasping, perspiring, stumbling, their faces contorted with pain. I never had the urge to “cut in.”

One night as I crawled into bed, I inadvertently set my root beer float on top of Jim Fixit's book. Horrified, my husband grabbed the book and wiped the jacket off with the sleeve of his pajama. “What kind of an animal are you?”

I thought then he might launch into his sanctimonious how-good-you'd-feel-if-you-got-up-at-five-thirty -and-ran-ten-miles-speech, bur he didn't.

I continued to reward my frustrations with food and he continued to run every day and brag about his jogger's elbow (which he got when he sideswiped a stop sign at an intersection). One morning when he returned from his run he asked brightly, “Guess who I saw running in the park?”

Before I could answer he said, “Louise Cremshaw. Remember her?”

Louise Cremshaw! We used to follow her around for shade. “Of course I remember Louise,” I said. “She was the only girl in our class who had to have the sleeves let out in her graduation gown.”

“Not any more,” he said, grabbing for a box of Jim Fixit's cereal. “She's been running and she's a real knockout.”

That did it. “Okay,” I said, throwing down the dish towel. “You've won. You've penetrated the barrier of good sense. I am yours. I will start to jog. Just tell me which chapters to start reading in The Complete Book of Jogging.”

“There are a lot of books you can read,” he hedged.

“There's Inner Walking by Tad Victor. He's the guy who wrote Inner Bowling, Inner Roller Skating, and Inner Gooney Golf.”

“What's wrong with my reading your Complete Book of Jogging? ”

“Wait until you're serious about it. Besides, you have to learn to walk before you can jog.”

Inner Walking said there were two people within my body (I certainly had the stomach for it). The outer part of me was instinctively competitive. But the inner part of me needed work. I had to teach myself to concentrate and to remove self-doubts about myself and my abilities.

It said a lot of sports people used the inner theory that said within you there is a better you than you think there is. I read about the skiers who subscribed to this theory and didn't regard bumps as adversaries, but as friends. They would ski over each one saying, “Thank you, bump.”

Or bowlers who threw a gutter ball would say, “Thank you, gutter, for being there.” Or the gooney golf players who didn't always make the cup but were grateful that the ball didn't land in the middle of the expressway. What they were really saying is that I had to be psyched up for walking and not be discouraged.

When a boulder lodged in my shoe, I said, “Thank you, rock, for nearly severing my toe from my foot.”

When a car with a bumper sticker that read “I found it” nearly ran me off the road, I said, “Thank you, car, for not strapping me to your hood to show everyone what you found today.”

As I ran into the driveway, my husband said, “I thought you were supposed to be walking.”

“I was,” I panted, “until I ran out of Twinkles to hold off the dogs.”

He said I was ready for Jim Fixit's book.

That night he brought it to the dining-room table and gently placed it before me like a chalice. In keeping with the moment, I genuflected and said a little prayer.

The big thing about jogging was that it was a pure sport. It was just you in a little pair of raggy gym shoes, a pair of shorts, and your own patch of lonely road. That was beautiful. Like a Rod McKuen poem.

It might have worked if someone had put out a pair of running trunks with tummy and thigh control, but there was no way I was going to show my legs from the knees up. I popped for a sixty-five-dollar pink velour warm-up suit.

The shoes were a little trickier. There were 147 styles, each of them priced from forty to eighty dollars. I chose a pair that gave me no arch support whatsoever but had pink shoelaces (can you believe my luck?) exactly the same shade as my pink velour warm-up suit. My handbag matched close enough.

The real zinger was the patch of lonely road. The street in front of my house was definitely out, as all the walkers were running from the dogs and the cars.

My husband told me to start a “training diary” of my distances and times and he would take me to the bike path by the canal.

The stitch in my side was sharp and persistent. I remembered that Mr. Fixit said, “No one ever died from a side stitch” and breathed deeply. I tossed in, “Thank you, stitch!”

“What did you say?” asked my husband.

I told him I had a stitch in my side, but if I considered it a friend it would go away. '

He said it was probably my sunglasses that I had looped over my pants gouging me and that once we got out of the car the pain would go away.

We parked the car and I looked at the bike path. I had seen lonelier patches of road leading from Disney-land after the Fourth of July fireworks.

“Who are all these people?” I asked.

“They're roller-skaters, bikers, skateboarders, kite flyers, and joggers.” It was easy to spot the joggers. They were all together in an ozone of liniment, bending and stretching and speaking fluent jogging to one another: “split times,” “euphoria,” “building up lactic acid and hitting the wall.”

There was something different about them that I couldn't put my finger on at first. Then it hit me. There was no one there who weighed over nine pounds. I felt like stretch marks at a Miss America pageant.

A bicyclist whizzed by, nearly clipping a jogger. The jogger shook his fist and shouted at him “WEIRDO!” Somehow, the remark seemed incongruous coming from a man who was pasting adhesive bandages over his nipples to keep them from getting sore when they rubbed against his shirt.

A couple of hours later, I dragged into Edna's kitchen, where she was washing dishes. “What's the matter with you?” she asked.

“I'm not sure. I'm either experiencing a euphoric high or I'm catching flu. Can I have those leftover French fries?”

“I thought you had to watch your weight.”

“I'm packing carbohydrates. I tell you, Edna, I'm exhausted trying to feel good about myself. All inner peace does is give me an appetite. Why am I telling you this? Everyone knows me like an open book.”

“Not really,” said Edna, rinsing plates and stacking them in the drainer to dry. “You are extremely conservative and guard your privacy. You take pains never to reveal anything about yourself so that other people have a hard time trying to help you.”

“Who told you that?”

“No one had to tell me. I can tell by the way you always point your body toward the door and your knees and feet are rigid.”

“Edna, my entire body is rigid because I am basted in Vaseline and I am suffering from Morton's Toe.”

“What's Morton's Toe?”

“Jogging terminology. It means' my second toe is longer than my big one and has turned purple and can fall off at any minute.”

“Didn't anyone ever tell you you have bad body English?”

“BAD BODY ENGLISH? You're just trying to cheer me up.”

“I'm serious. You show me a woman who sits like you do and I'll show you a woman who is sexually inhibited, defensive, withdrawn, and has a mind closed to new ideas.”

“You can tell all that just by looking at me?”

“Sure. Why, I can tell you that Ralph there,” she said, nodding toward her dog, “is unfulfilled, restless, and manifests his anxieties and frustrations in his actions.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “That's really amazing. How did you figure all that out?”

“Ralph just wet on your shoe.”

When I went home, I limped into the bedroom and picked up my jogger's diary. On page one I put the date, wrote under it, “Erma hit the wall and went right up it,” and slammed it shut!

Next to it on the bedside table was Jim Fixit's book. I studied the cover, then stood in front of the mirror and posed my legs like his. My forty-dollar shoes were spattered with mud and Ralph. The pink shoelaces hung limp. I had oil on my beautiful pink velour pants. I hiked up the pantlegs to see if my skin was taut, the muscles firm and the knees bony. My legs looked like an unpaved road with purple rivers running everywhere.

Easy for Mr. Fixit. He hadn't carried his babies low.

how to tell your best friend she has bad body English

it WAS PROBABLY a coincidence that the carryout boy looked at my license plates while loading the groceries and said, “I don't get it. What's TZE 403 stand for?”

“It's my license plates,” I said.

“I know, but they don't make any sense.”

“Are they supposed to?”

“Sure. You're the only driver I know who doesn't have something clever on her plates. Some kind of identification.”

I looked up and down the line of parked cars. There were E-Z DUZ IT, I. M. CUTE, SAY AAH, PAID 4, 2 CLOSE, CALL ME, I DRINK, and FLY ME.

“My Mom's got a neat set of plates,” he said. “She's got 28-36-42. I know what you're thinking, but the good numbers were already taken.” He slammed down the lid. “You don't even have a bumper sticker for anything. That's unusual.”

On the way home, I checked out every car on the road. He was right. Just by looking at a car you knew who was for school levies, who they voted for, their religion, their alma mater, their club affiliation, their causes, and their issues. (I could hardly wait to pass the bumper and see who belonged to the sticker that read WOMEN NEED ATHLETIC SUPPORTERS TOO.)

Maybe Edna was right. Maybe I was overly zealous about my privacy. When I thought about it, I didn't have a CB in my car to carry on a conversation with other drivers. I had never named a house or a cabin something clever like “Dew Drop Inn” and had never worn my name in gold on a chain around my neck.

I didn't personalize my blouses, towels, or stationery with my initials or send out warm, intimate newsletters about our family at Christmas.

I wore a mood ring for two weeks once, but discarded it when I looked at my American Express bill one January and went into ring failure.

I was so opposed to nametags that once when a woman slapped a gummed label over my left bosom that said “Hello! My name is Erma!” I leaned over and said, “Now, what shall we name the other one?”

I didn't even have a telephone that answered with a clever recording that said, “Hi there. I'm really glad you called. At the sound of the beep, tell me where you're coming from and I'll call you back and tell you where it's at.”

At the sound of the beep, I would go into cardiac arrest in an effort to say my name and read my own phone number off my own phone. (I once called my mother and found myself spelling my last name.) Another time I had a note to return a call and dialed the number. There was a slick voice that said huskily, “Hi, Honey. I told you you'd call. I'm out getting your favorite white wine. The key is in the usual place. At the sound of the tone, tell me what time you'll be here.”

No one was a person of mystery any more.

The T-shirt craze had clearly gotten out of hand. In one day alone I encountered three propositions, four declarations, two obscene suggestions, and a word so bad I stopped the car and threw a blanket over the girl's chest.

Mother was with me one day when I stopped for a traffic light and a healthy blonde with jeans so tight her hipbones looked like towel hooks crossed in front of the car. Tucked inside was a T-shirt that read in large, bold letters SPACE FOR RENT.

We didn't say anything for a full minute. Then Mother observed, “You can say what you want, but she certainly is well read.”

Well read, indeed. I could be clever if I wanted to. My car license was up for renewal. Maybe I'd go for something kinky on my plates.

“How many letters do we have to work with?” asked my husband.

“Six,” I said.

“Great,” said my son. “How about BEWARE?”

“Or GAS HOG?”

“Aw, c'mon,” I said, “I want a plate that won't have people passing me at seventy-five miles an hour just to see what kind of a nut is behind the wheel. I was thinking more of a plate that would give me character ... a self-description that would be unique and apply only to me.”

“How many letters in DRUDGE?” asked my son.

We must have sat there another two hours trying to get a six-letter combination. Finally I said, “I've got it. How about VIT B-12? What do you think?”

“I think you have just solved the problem of the kids ever borrowing your car again.”

Having personalized license plates was a step forward in revealing my mystique, but I wasn't sure I wanted people sitting around reading my entire body. According to the book Edna loaned me (Body English Spoken Here) it wasn't that hard to do.

Women who crossed their legs in cold weather were announcing they wanted attention. In hot weather, they were bragging.

Doctors who tapped pencils were reassuring themselves they hadn't lost them during an examination.

Men who removed their wedding rings while attending a convention in another city were saying they didn't care whether they lived or died.

Women who covered the telephone receiver when they listened were hearing something they shouldn't.

Teeth closing in on a dentist's hand is definitely interpreted as a hostile act.

But it worked both ways. If I could learn Body English I'd be able to read what other people were thinking even if they did not utter a single word. There was an entire section on the subtle signs men and women who are on the make exchange that was absolutely fascinating.

This was a subject I couldn't even draw on from memory. It had been too long. I wouldn't know a pitch if I struck at it.

Body English Spoken Here made me an authority. I felt I could interpret any subtlety the opposite sex threw at me. I didn't have a chance to test it until one afternoon when Mayva and I stopped shopping to grab a bite of lunch.

At a table a short distance from us were two men who glanced our way.

“Don't look at them,” I said without moving my lips. “I can tell you that men mentally raise the hemline of a woman's skirt six inches if she wears lipstick.”

Mayva rummaged in her handbag. “Do I have any left on?”

“If you look them in the eye and their pupils dilate, you're in over your head.”

“What other goodies do you know?”

“I know that when you are flirting your eyes become less baggy, your jowls firm up, your shoulders become straighter, and you suck in your stomach without thinking about it. And if you put on your glasses, you'll look more intelligent than you really are.”

Mayva gave a sharp cry. “What am I saying? Quick? One of them is coming over toward us.”

“Did you cross your legs?” I whispered loudly. “That's a come-on. Or unbutton your jacket? Or moisten your lips? Tell me you didn't moisten your lips.”

“I don't think so,” said Mayva.

“Then just keep your head down and we'll try to undo any message our bodies sent.”

A shadow crossed the table and kept going.

Mayva looked at me with disgust. “I just read the body of the man that passed us. It said 'Don't get too choked up. I'm going to the men's room.'”

Mayva could really get on your nerves and despite what she thought I still believed knowing Body English was a real plus. Especially the part devoted to the Body English of teachers. Boy, did I need that. With two children still left in high school I had to admit I was lost without an interpreter.

I didn't know what had happened to education, but within the past several years it was getting tougher and tougher to speak the language.

It was simple back in the days when teachers spoke in polite language. I didn't need an interpreter to know that when Miss Meeks said, “Bruce's personal habits have shown marked improvement” she really was saying, “He no longer wets himself every -day now that he has discovered the bathroom walls.”

Or “I personally hope that your son develops more self-confidence” meant he copied on every test. I knew when she duly reported, “His paper on irrigation among the Barbizon tribe was far above that expected from a fourth-grader” it translated to “How long did it take you to write it?”

But in recent years I couldn't make head or tail of what they were saying. In fact, last year's conference had been a nightmare.

When I was seated at the desk, Mrs. Vucci polished her glasses and said, “Well, let's see here what we have in the way of comments from Bruce's other teachers. According to this report, Coach Weems says he has potential but is incapable of any viable feedback. That tells us, of course, that we have a child who does not relate to social interreaction.”

I nodded numbly.

"Mrs. Wormstad says he is not motivated by curriculum innovation and they don't want him to stagnate in a lockup system and they're trying to stimulate his awareness. Mrs. Rensler writes he is having behavior modification problems and they're putting him in a modular-flexible schedule. Let's hope it works.

“I personally feel we have to consider the conundrum. But seriously,” she said, “it's hard to say where the burden for apathy lies, but before his achievement levels polarize, we'll counsel Bruce so he can realize his potential and aim for some tangible goals.”

I had not understood one single word she had said.

“Do you have any questions?” she asked, noting my silence.

I shook my head. She wouldn't have understood the questions and I wouldn't have understood the answers. What a pair.

With Body English I might at least stand a chance. Another teacher conference was coming up in a couple of weeks and I wanted to be ready for it.

My appointment was for seven-thirty and I was early. As I poked my head around the corner of the room, Mrs. Lutz said without looking up from her desk, “I know. We all dread these sessions, don't we?”

“How can you tell that?” I smiled.

“Your reticence to appear fully in the doorway instead of inching your way into the room.”

I sat down on the edge of the chair. She looked over her half-glasses and said, “There is no need to be uptight. Just sit back and relax.”

“I am relaxed,” I said quickly.

“No one is relaxed sitting on the edge of the chair. And stop worrying, it's not that bad.”

“I don't think it's bad.”

“Of course you do,” she corrected. “I can tell by the way your feet are coiled around the chair legs.”

This wasn't working at all. She wasn't supposed to be reading my body. I was supposed to be reading hers."

But I couldn't help it. The more she talked, the harder time I had to keep my body from talking. When she brought out his essay on “The Anatomy of a Belch” I sank into a fetal position and lowered my head.

When she told me he not only parked his car illegally in front of the school but told the security people he thought they had valet parking, I made a necklace out of her paper clips and chewed at my cuticles until they bled.

By the time she told me his career tests showed his future lay in shepherding, I had used every bit of Body English in the book.

It was useless to play games. She asked me if my son and I related to one another. I said nervously only through a young marriage. She said that wasn't what she meant. She was trying to establish what kind of a parent-child relationship we had.

That's when it all came out. I told her none of my children understood parents my age. They talked to me but they never listened to what I had to say. They were always too busy. I stopped telling them anything because when I did I was always in for a lecture. They never took my side.

They blamed me for everything. Never let me assume responsibility for things I could do myself. All they did was criticize. (I leaned forward.) I think they even spy on me. “Miss Lutz,” I said flatly, “they treat me like an adult.”

She folded my son's manila folder and leaned back on her chair. “You're not the only parent who has problems with their children understanding them,” she said. “There's a wonderful new manual out called Bringing Up Parents the Okay Way. I don't know whether or not you can get your children to read it, but at least you'll get a better understanding of why they do and say the things they do.”

I started to stand up.

“Don't forger your feet,” cautioned Miss Lutz, nodding toward my legs still coiled around the legs of the chair. “That could be interpreted as some very strong Body English.”

I smiled smugly. “I read a little Body English myself,” I said proudly. “As a matter of fact, while you've been observing me, I've been observing you. I have come to the conclusion you are an excellent teacher, secure, in command of a situation, and will be around here for a long time.”

“Not really,” she said, easing herself out of the chair. “I'm eight months pregnant and am going on maternity leave next week.”

Some bodies are very deceptive.