by N. A. Green

Created on: December 11, 2008

Exercise.

The word either evokes a collective groan of dread and anticipated pain, or an exhilarated war cry from the masses, depending on which crowd you happen to run with.

There are, as we all know, many ways to exercise. You could take a nice, brisk jog through your neighborhood, or perhaps visit your local high school and take a few laps around the track. There are Thigh Masters, Stair Masters, Ab Masters, Bicep Masters, Masters of the Univer- wait, that's not an exercise machine. Sorry. I got a little carried away.

You can buy yoga and pilates DVDs, along with your very own mat. Thanks to the wonders of technology you can, in the privacy of your own home, contort and bend your body into all manners of strange, slightly uncomfortable positions whilst your cats, dogs, or small children look on with a mixture of curiosity and horror. You can sweat to the Oldies, groove to the beat, dance to the music, and you can do this all in private without fear of looking like a complete and utter idiot.

Of course, there are those of us who honestly and truly do not mind making fools out of themselves in public. I am one of those people who quite often make an idiot out of themselves completely unintentionally, and therefore I really don't have a problem doing it on purpose.

This is why I have a gym membership.

Not only am I completely and utterly unoriginal in my methods of working out, but I am also very lazy and one of the only motivations I can seem to find to get myself to exercise in the first place is if I'm paying someone to supply me with the equipment.

I am about as uncoordinated as they come. Once upon a time while I was in high school, I was a member of the drama club and fancied that I could dance. I was in a few musical productions in high school and thought that I was amazing. When I watched a video tape of my performance later in life however, with my bemused husband at my side fighting off gales of hysterical laughter, I realized that I had been looking at my tap shoes with rose-tinted glasses.
That being said, one of my favorite forms of exercise are aerobic classes.

You know the ones. Step-one-two, down-turn-two, up-kick, LIFT THOSE LEGS! All perfectly coordinated to peppy dance music, with a perky, sculpted woman with a perfectly curled ponytail bouncing about directing your class. I love to be in those tight little rooms, with the music blasting and my short, awkwardly-dressed, sweaty self fumbling about trying to keep up with the rest of the choreographed

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