Observe and report

Dear Readers:

Y’all know I love to have a post from a guest blogger. Today I have for your reading pleasure a post from Eddie. I dragged him to my Biddy Boot Camp. Here is his report.

Love,
Beth

Trying not to drown: My experience with Beth’s Biddies
By Eddie C.

Beth invited me to attend her pool aerobics class, and so I did. When we walked in, the grannies were already in the pool. We are not young, but were by far the youngest people there. Beth instructed me to get a waist thingy, and strap it on. (Note from Beth: He’s talking about an Aquajogger.)

I felt super self conscious because they were all staring at me. I think two people had worn my belt before as I had to make a major adjustment to the strap. I climbed into the pool, and the ladies were very welcoming. One lady in particular took an interest in me. She started giving me pointers:

If you push against the water as hard as you can, you will get a great workout. Trust me. My obese ex-husband tried this, and he was red and dying. He never came back!

My main thought was this:

If I’m dying, Beth better beat all these old bitches to my body to give me CPR. If I wake up, and it’s not her, I’m gonna be pissed!

The class begins, and I can best describe the movement as swirls and kicking. (Note from Beth: It’s just jogging.) I feel strange because I can’t seem to get the movements to look or feel smooth like everyone else in the class. The instructor looks at me, and I smile. She smiles back and says:

He’s giving me the courtesy smile.

Then I hear this:

Old Lady No. 1: He won’t be smiling for long!

Old Lady No. 2: Yeah! In about two minutes!

Damn! What happened to the sweet old ladies?! It was clear that there would be no friends in the pool; I was on my own. Not even Beth was making eye contact. (Note from Beth: Nope. I’m there to work, not socialize. You all know this.)

Things got heated up when we were instructed to touch our toes with our hands. I wanted to ask:

How the hell do we do that and stay afloat?

But without missing a beat, they all started doing it! Lucky for me, I had a secret weapon. I am 6’4” and could still touch the pool floor. Even with this super power, I could not even come close to doing it right. In fact, I was a rhythm-less freak. I could not sync my arms and my legs to save my life. I thought:

This must be the way white people feel when they try to dance salsa.

After what seemed like forever of “Let’s watch this big doofus try this,” the instructor announced that we had Tabata coming up next. I don’t know who this Tabata dude is, but he is not my friend! Plus, she started bringing out the foamy weight things, and I started to panic:

Crap! The burn is coming, and I just spent an hour trying to touch my toes gracefully!

The one thing in my favor was the water. No one could see me sweat.

Now, the way a Tabata works is you do 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off.

HOWEVER, if you are in the water, trying not to drown, there is no off time. So, you have to tread water instead of being still and “resting.”  How these ladies can do all these moves and never move from the spot, I have no freakin’ idea! I was all over the damn pool. I was all on top of folks. I would have to pause and use the floor to push myself back to my original spot. “I’m sorry! Excuse me!” is all I seemed to be saying the whole time.

At one point, I look over at Beth, and she was going so freakin’ fast. I was like:

How the hell is she going so damn fast without going head first into the water?!

I tried to match her, and I could not. She was doing a sprint, and I was well … not so much. At one point, it turned into a participants’ choice Tabata. I stuck to stay alive and afloat. I look over, and I promise you I wish I had my phone for video. The move that Beth chose is a familiar move to me but it’s called a parallette, and it’s done on the ground.

I was like WTF?! I have zero chance at that.

Finally, that part was over, and we put our weights on the edge of the pool. But that’s not all. The instructor gave us all a noodle: There was more burn to follow. We had to kick our legs back, get on top of the noodle with our arms (like a push-up) and press it down and up into the water one hundred billion times.

Next, circles with the noodle in the water and then reverse. At this point, I just closed my eyes. I couldn’t see a damn thing anyway, because the reverse circle dumps all the water in your face. You better figure out when to breathe.

I believe this is the point where most people drown.

We then had to straddle as if it were some kind of seahorse and paddle with our hands up all around the pool. (Note from Beth: He does not mean “paddle.” He means “bicycle.”)

I knew this had to be close to the end. Why? Suddenly as I was passing ladies on my paddling extravaganza, they became nice old ladies again.

Thanks for joining us.

Please, come back again.

Finally we put the noodles up on the edge and begin our stretches. I could not enjoy the stretch because all I could think about was peeing.

So my advice if you are going to join these warriors:

1. Don’t think for one second that you are going to out-do them.
2. Check your ego, or they will check it for you.
3. Pee before you go.

Thank you to these wonderful, beautiful ladies for having me.

He lived, see?!

Pruney as he was.