Friday, January 30, 2004 My dating weight
I have an idle couple of days ahead of me, and then I go into the study, where idleness is practically mandatory. I suppose I could run around the research unit in my hospital slippers, but I won't, and I know that. It would probably annoy the other study people. And I don't like physical activity.
When I was down in Key West, I realized just how out of shape I was when a day or two of walking around made my legs incredibly sore. Like, crippled-up sore. I decided I needed to be less sedentary, and so I spent the rest of the vacation trying ridiculous things.
I tried beach volley ball. (I don't thing there's anything more ridiculous.) Naturally, it was nothing more than a ghastly redux of middle school, when I had to have tutoring. In gym.
I'd been homeschooled for a number of years, and I lived in a relatively child-free subdivision. I didn't get out much, and when I did, I'd do things like ride my bike over to the big drainage pipe and walk around in there. Team sports were a mystery to me, so my gym teacher took to pulling me out of study hall to coach me on how to serve a volley ball or avoid hitting myself in the forehead with a plastic lacrosse stick.
It didn't take. I was not an asset to my beach volley ball team. If I were presented with a lacrosse stick tomorrow, I doubt I'd come through any encounter with it unscathed.
Still, by the time the (suddenly) former mate and I left Key West, I felt pretty good about my new slightly less lumpish lifestyle. Unfortunately, It was winter in most of the country, including Virginia. I abandoned my plan to do things other than sitting quietly and relaxing in a reclined position.
A while back, in the time of the idiotic move to Delaware, my kind-hearted former landlord took me on a tour of the townhouse where the then-mate and I would end up sharing with him and his hyperactive eight-year-old for most of my senior year of college. In the bedroom that he'd cleared out in order to rent to strangers, he pointed to the pull-up bar bolted to the ceiling. "I put that in to get a little excercise," he said. Then he patted his tummy and said something about his "dating weight."
I was so puzzled. I understood that one would want to be more attractive, in order to pick up people that one also found attractive, but the idea of dating requirements seemed so absurd.
Now it's the concept of dating in general that gets me. I don't think I've gone on a date since my junior year of high school. I've done a lot of "hanging out" and some "breaking and entering an unjustly warehoused public building" and some "ill-advised and nearly instant cohabitation," but rarely a "date". I've certainly gone to dinners and movies and things with significant other, but somehow it seems like it doesn't count. The point of a date is to impress (the pants off of!) the person one is taking out. Once the relationship begins, you might as well walk around in a house coat and curlers. One no longer goes on dates. One goes on outings.
I don't know. I feel like I'm still blinking and puzzled when it comes to my own future, but it's all fascinating. I just can't necesarily see myself participating in the world the way other people do. posted by Frenz | 1/30/2004 11:39:00 PM
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