Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams:
Let me just start by saying that I’ll break your leg if you laugh, and I’ll break both your legs if you tell anyone what I'm about to tell you. You got that? I have my pride. Do you still want to continue? Think long and hard about it. Maybe you should shut your eyes and be happy in your ignorance. No? You’re still here? Okay, you’ve been warned, so don’t go blabbing this to anyone!

As I grow incrementally older, it gets exponentially more difficult to maintain my svelte waistline. I no longer fit into the contours of my twenty something self. When I gaze at all those yellowing thirty-year-old photos of myself, I weep. My tears splash across those celluloid images, blurring the slim young man smiling into the camera, and I find myself asking how the bloated old man staring down at his prior self could have allowed this tragic metamorphosis to occur. And then, I ponder how to mold myself back into the beaming boy of my youth.

If you know me, you know that I’m a possessed man. Every morning I religiously pull on a pair of running shorts, lace up my shoes, and head out the door for a minimum of six miles on the road at a quick clip. You know that when I climb, I need the challenge of knowing success is not a given, that my feet might falter on the rock, that my crampons might slip on the ice, and that the fall might end in tragedy. If you know me, you know that I’ll go to great lengths to accomplish my goals.

And that’s why I just bought a hula hoop!

What? A hula hoop? One of those silly round things the girls spun around their waists back in the second grade? Hula hoops are for girls!

Yep, that’s what I’m talking about: a hula hoop. I bought a hula hoop, so get over it.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’ve got one of those little smirks on your face, and you’ve got this picture in your mind. You see a rumpled 59-year-old man out in the middle of the street with his stomach hanging out and sweat flopping off his forehead, trying to spin a stupid plastic ring around his torso. He has a determined look on his face, but no amount of determination can keep the hoop above his hips. Every few seconds, it clatters to the pavement, and he slowly bends down and picks it up for another futile attempt. It’s a shameful sight. You want to tell him to stop. Relax! You want to forget that you ever imagined this scenario. No one should have to walk through life with that image burned into their memory. But you can’t erase the nightmare.

So let me put your mind at ease.

Over the course of my journey toward a leaner, slimmer me, a friend from New York confided to me that she was a hooper. Not a closet hooper, but a real, honest to god, out in the open, public hooper. In fact, she said that she even went to hoop classes several times a week. Back where she came from, lots of folks hoop, and they have a whooping good time doing it too. She said her instructor dropped over a hundred pounds in a year, and she did it simply by hooping.

You can imagine the hope growing in me. It sounded easy. Why not try it? After a couple of hoop sessions, I’d be back to form. Already, I felt that old grin spreading my cheeks.

But that’s when she spit out the caveat. Hooping is a girl thing. Boys don’t do it. Not once had she ever seen one single man do the spin. It was unheard of and just wasn’t done.

My grin splattered to the floor. Every drop of hope dripped out of me and puddled around my feet. Now what?

But!

Here’s the deal.

After my initial defeat, I considered the situation. Why couldn’t a man spin the hoop? The internet said that hooping burned as many calories as jogging, and it toned the abs too. It said that hooping brought the average heart rate up around a hundred-and-fifty beats per minute. It said that serious hoopers often lost a couple of inches from their waistlines in their first month of hooping alone.

What was I waiting for?

Was I a man, or a mouse caged within the acceptable constraints of society?

So what if only women hooped.

That could change.

And where was the man who’d bring about that change?

I looked down and saw his feet in my shoes.

Ten minutes later, I walked into the local Sports Chalet, and walked out empty-handed thirty seconds later. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t carry a hula hoop up to the sales counter, plop my card down, and walk out while everyone stared.

I was nothing more than a mouse, a rodent, a damned attic dweller condemned to the darkness of my prejudice!

At home, Sweetie calmed my damaged psyche. She nodded, patted me on the head, and suggested that we both return to the store. I could explain that my purchase was for her, slam my money on the counter, and march out with my head held high.

And we did just that.

So, if you feel any seismic waves shivering through the ground, don’t worry. It’s not an earthquake.

It’s me, spinning the hoop.


Now that you know, don’t forget my warning: I’ll break your leg if you laugh, and I’ll break both your legs if you tell anyone.