Gimme a Pop - UNGH!

There are some things I don't do.
I don't curl my bangs and puff them up with hairspray. I did try that, back inna day when it was so tres vogue, but my feather-fine muppet hair took 8 gallons of hairspray to stand up, and then promptly sat down again, 14 seconds later.
I don't talk on my cellphone in public. I rarely talk on the phone at all, actually, but never in public - especially crowded areas just BRIMMING with people who couldn't care less what I have to say to my close friends.
There are a lot of things I do not do.
Yesterday, I discovered one more.

Step Funk! with John. At my gym. John is an awesome instructor, he's subbed for my Pilates class and he is hard but funny, and I usually laugh through the class and go home ouching. So he told me about his new class and I said, "SURE! I'll try that!"

I have, in my not-so long life, tried Jazzercize for preciously 7 minutes. With the grapevining and the complicated moves, I was out of breath and out of pride in record time. I calmly rolled up my mat and stomped out the door (I was probably 23 when I tried it).

I thought a step class sounded fun, though. Stepping on and off something, hey, I do that every day! I could do that a hundred times in an hour.

FUN! Eff Yoo Ehn. FUN.

So apparently a step class is very much like aerobics, only you step up on things and then do the complicated moves like grapevine, the MAMBO move and Pivot, or as I like to call it, "the sure-to-completely-fuck-up-my-knee move."

(I'm pretty sure I'm developing a wicked bum knee. It clicks when I put weight on it to go up stairs or pretty much any movement that bends it. It doesn't hurt, yet, but it clicks increasingly louder. That grinding noise? Pshaw, they both do that.)

There were about 15 people in the class, a couple of whom I recall from the Pilates class, and they're funny and cool. And the gym is not at all about hardbodies. There are a couple, but they are typically grunting with enthusiasm in the weight room, while the rest of us softly rounded humans are sweating and beet-facing it on the cardio machines. It is a cool gym, I really like it. So the class was made up of all ages and body types, and yet STILL I was the only one who apparently can't keep it straight what foot we're starting on. RIGHT, Salome. Right foot starts until he says, LEFT. Dammit.

Oh, and the Funk! part? That's where you SHIMMY as you do the grapevine, and when you do the (ingeniously named) "walk-up" move - you POP! at the mirror. Apparently a pop is a sort of hip-hop triumph move. I have no idea. I don't POP! at anything. I get pretty enthusiastic sometimes, but I don't believe I have ever done a triumph, full body seizure POP! at anything. And part of me really wants to. Ya know. Stay current and all of that.

My POP! was sort of a half-assed rictus of movement, with an embarrassed grin, and several glances around to make sure I wasn't looking like a complete idiot. And Hey! I was. Grrreat.

To my credit, I lasted 17 minutes and one loooong drink of water until I quietly grabbed my towel and fled from the room. Only, FANTASTICALLY, I fled on a grapevine, and collided with the woman next to me, who had to be about 159 years old, and was grapevining and POP!ing to beat the band. Sigh.

To my further credit, when all I really wanted to do was go outside and smoke and kick things, I then went straight to the treadmill and walked fast on a steep incline (because running? Oh please....) for an additional 15 minutes, and then did my pull-ups and the dips on the Gravitron thingy, that is basically like my own personal medieval torture chamber - only it takes two days for the pain to be felt.

But because I was a quitter, I didn't reward myself in the steam room, which I love, and which I will sit in until I'm going to pass out, or until the magazine I illegally bring in with me (because God Forbid I'm left alone with my thoughts) starts to disintegrate.

Because I am a quitter. And quitters never win. But they do go outside and smoke. And then they go home and have a knitting fit and basically go apeshit on a poorly knit scarf.

The scarf story is my next installment in a new series which I will entitle:
I have good intentions, but basically I'm a ridiculous perfectionist who has hissy fits when I'm not perfect, and that's rough, because I'm so far from perfect, perfect can't call me on a cellphone.

Oh and my 17 minutes? Well, that has equated into two VERY sore calf muscles that are tender enough to make me walk funny today, and by tomorrow will basically have me immobilized, where I walk with sharp exhalations of pain and a wincing expression. Don't worry, all my work-mates are totally used to seeing me like this. Sigh.