The secret is out, time to get busy

ROBERT GARDNER

Well, so much for my little secret.

Last week I confided that it was possible to use one’s advanced

age as a convenient excuse to get out of all sorts of things --

dishes, laundry, whatever. The wrong people read it, and now I’m so

busy I can hardly remember my name. I can hardly remember my name

anyway, but that’s a different story.

Heaven forbid I should leave as much as an unwashed spoon now.

“We’re on to you,” they growl and usher me into the kitchen where I

am forced to wash and polish anything in sight. Naps? Every time I so

much as look at the couch I’m bustled off on a walk. Oh, for the life

that once I led.

Then my know-it-all daughter came over and announced that I wasn’t

the man I used to be. I haven’t been the man I used to be for about

20 years, so the fact that she has just noticed is a little puzzling,

but what was more puzzling was her solution.

“I’ve hired you a trainer,” she announced.

A trainer? What was a trainer going to do? Teach me to sit, roll

over, beg?

No, she explained, this was a personal trainer.

Great. So he’d personally teach me to sit, roll over, etc. That

made all the difference.

No, she explained once again, this was a person who would come to

the house and work me out.

That I understood. About a year ago I walked downtown several days

a week to a gym in Corona del Mar. There, a young woman with the face

of an angel and the soul of Attila the Hun put me through my paces.

She was a slave driver, deaf to any consideration of my age. I was

lifting this weight, pushing that, down on the floor being twisted

into unnatural shapes. With the workouts she put me through, I felt I

should resemble our new governor. The mirror told me I looked more

like the Scarecrow of Oz, but I did feel better, and I think I got a

little stronger. Then for some reason I quit going. Actually, the

reason was sheer laziness. Much easier to lie on my couch

contemplating my navel, than to maneuver that navel up and down in a

series of sit-ups.

Now, I’m to start the routine again with one big difference. I

don’t have to walk downtown. The personal trainer comes to my house.

Instead of being tortured with all the other prisoners in the gym, I

can be tortured in the privacy of my own home. What an improvement.

There may be an advantage here, however. I’m assuming we’ll work

out in the living room. The living room is where my couch is, and I’m

thinking that if I can just get that trainer to sit on the couch for

a few minutes, relax, get comfortable, maybe stretch out a little bit

... what is it they say in “Casablanca” -- this could be the

beginning of a beautiful friendship?

If not, maybe I can sell him on the exercise advantages of washing

my dirty dishes. If that fails, I’ll do the work out, but there’s one

thing I absolutely refuse to exercise, and that’s my big mouth.

That’s how I got into this situation.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.