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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Exercise (Prompt: Sports)

As an overweight child,
I hated playing sports,
but I did so
mostly because if I didn't play
the teams were uneven.

I would rather spend
my time
in my parents’ living room,
lost in a pair of
plastic over-the-ear
headphones
plugged into the
stereo (as it was called then),
playing records
I borrowed from the
public library.

Music was my earliest
passion.

When I was 13,
for Christmas,
my parents gave me
a pair of headphones
that had an AM radio
built-in to them!
They even had
telescoping rabbit ears
antenna for
improved reception.

(Remember, this was 1976.)

So,
on Sunday mornings
I would take my headphones
and ride my crummy little
two-wheeler up and down
the eight block
section of neighborhood
where I was allowed,
and listen to Casey Kasem’s
American Top 40,
and dream of making music
that he would
someday introduce.

It was the only time
I ever liked
exercise.

16 comments:

  1. yes! bike riding to the radio!!
    I have these happy memories too!

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  2. And I was a sight too, with those big damned headphones, just lazing about on a Sunday morning. Thanks for the comment.

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  3. Ha! That's a good motivator. I think I got my first album around '76... KISS Alive 2!!!!!!!

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  4. KISS Alive II! And party e-ver-ee day!

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  5. Casey Kasem! And the Weekly Top Forteeeeeee! ;)
    Love this, Mosk. Fun little slice of life, and commentary on sports. Oh, to love "exercise" the way we did as kids. The only thing I'd happily do daily is hike, and there's never enough time.

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  6. Thanks, de! I loved his closing too "Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars" which is retrospect is a pretty frustrating proposition!

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  7. I love how you throw yourself into your writing. You wake it up with personality. And a writer is always bigger than his words, which makes you double super awesome! ;)

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    1. Thanks Andrea, ain't you sweet? Now you know why I prefer to use small words - they make me seem bigger. (Rodney Dangerfield joke: You wanna know how to look thin? Hang out with fat people.)

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  8. I love listening to music when I exercise (I just plain love music)... I could picture you riding around like that... and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40! I almost forgot about that.

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    1. Thanks Laurie - just I think today I'd be given a ticket as I probably couldn't hear the traffic with those monsters on!

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  9. This really brought back some memories!

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    1. Thanks, were you there too? I don't remember you.

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  10. The best exercise was always the kind where you're having so much fun that you didn't even notice you were exercising.

    To that effect, that's why my ear buds are always in when I'm at the gym: So I can pay as little attention as possible to the actual exercising.

    By the way, we have a few things in common: We were both overweight kids in the same era, we both love music, both our blogs have Buddha themes, and they both feature our poetry and writing.

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    1. Thanks Eric, we probably would've hung together in PE, walking laps instead of doing calisthenics.

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  11. Mosk, we are the same age! I was 13 in 1976. (Visited the "Freedom Train" that year...) This was such an excellent reminiscence!!

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  12. Thanks, Diana, but I must admit you write younger than I.

    The "Freedom Train?" I barely remember that, but I was in my junior high school musical about the Revolutionary War (!) which featured our founding fathers breaking out into song during the Constitutional Congress. I forgot which part I played, perhaps a Mexican Benedict Arnold.

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