Acting your age, not your shoe size!

Well today was none other than Wacky Wednesday.  This morning a friend sent me an email from the Weight Watchers site and asked if I was up for some fun?  After ribbing her about that sounding similar to “For a good time call…..” I downloaded the attachment.  This afternoon we let our inner child out to play – as the Weight Watcher article suggested, on a play ground!

Can you imagine two mid-50 year old women cavorting around on a school playground?  We arrive at the school at approximately 3:45 p.m. thinking that schools have been out for at least an hour by this time.  We expected to find the playground empty, it wasn’t.  There must have been an after school care going on because we counted at least 20 kids and 2 adults supervising them.  Not wanting to embarrass ourselves... (?!) And I can just imagine those reading this thinking, we should have gone home if I really meant that about not wanting to embarrass ourselves…..my friend and I went to the area without the kids.

What I want to know is what happened to the playground equipment of our childhood?  Everything we encountered today was made out of some kind of pipe.  What we were supposed to do was swing, working our abs, our biceps and our legs, but there weren’t any swings at the school we went to.  There weren’t see-saws or even jungle gyms.  Even that whirling dervish thingamajing, you know the thing you spun around on that looked like a clock with pipes on it that made you dizzy and ultimately sick to your stomach, that wasn’t even there.  Sliding boards that stood tall and proud now are plastic instead of steel and I was wearing shorts, so that plastic and my bare thunder thighs proved not to be a good match!

So now that I’ve set the scene, you may be wondering what we did do!  Well, we started by climbing up a four foot high slide??? But took 2 steps at a time, as was suggested by the Weight Watcher’s article.  We then skidded our way down – well, for me it was more of a peel and stick ride down the slide, and then proceeded to run around and do it 9 more times.  Believe it or not that was a workout!  While we were laughing at this, the adults with the children 50 yards away, were looking at us as if we might have been challenged.  One remarking….that looks like fun, in a very sarcastic voice!  A young boy wandered over to us and he started climbing on some of the apparatus in our area.   When I asked him if they (meaning the school), had any swings, he replied, yes.  When I asked where, he said at home.  Obviously he missed the implication of my meaning the school!  Anyway do you know the ladder like thing that is parallel to the ground that you use your hands to walk hand over hand on?  Well, now that thing has triangles instead of just the rungs.  Anyway, this kid is very adroitly swinging from one grip to another and we watched admirably.  That was the next thing on the list of scheduled activities.  Well, when he dismounts, I go and try to “hang” from this, but of course I’m too tall, so I then try to lift my legs, by bending my knees, well there is no way my rotator cuffs are going to support my adult abundance!  I drop to the ground with a thud landing on my knees.   As my cohort and I start cackling, this child says, I didn’t know old ladies liked to play on school equipment!  Old ladies?!!!  I then felt like Methuzela’s mother!  And don’t even ask me who she is….it’s a phrase I remember from my childhood meaning someone older than dirt!  The next thing we head to is some kind of climbing device that looks like it has oversized cup handles, again it is made out of pipe, the handle things are transitioned below a bar which is on a 45 degree incline.  Not knowing exactly what to do, we start climbing it and we are pleased to at least feel like we are having an inner thigh work out.  From there we stand with our feet in these cup things and push and pull ourselves in and out, kind of like a push-up against a wall.  While we aren’t exactly following the article, we are at least exercising.  The last piece of equipment we decide to tackle is what I’m going to call the waffle slide.  Sliding boards back in my day were pieces of sheet metal that were maybe 7 feet high, with metal sides.  The waffler slide is made out of plastic (ok at least it was heavy duty plastic), but the slide sides are rippled like a waffle potato chip (which by this point I’m craving and the reason I’m in need of doing these crazy workouts!).  Well, looking at this contraption, I admit to my workout partner, that I’m worried my hips won’t make it through, she goes first and I absolutely crack up.  Her hips fluttered through this thing, just as I feared mine would.  Because I laughed, she made me do it as well.  I will let you know what the bruising looks like tomorrow!

Anyway, we left the playground amidst the sly chuckles of the other adults in the area.  While our bodies might be bruised (ya think?), we decided to do our bicep curls with a glass of wine to sooth our inner adult!  I will admit that my inner adult much preferred its exercise in comparison with my inner child’s spanking!

Life is too short to have dull moments!  J

Looking up!

Barb