Muscle Memory

The theme this week seems to be high school for me. Recently, I got word that my best HS gal pals are planning a bachelorette party UP here instead of Portland. I am elated! Continuing on this theme, last night I was at Crossfit and when I wasn't crying (on the inside of course) because my hands are killing me from the pull-up bar, I was thinking back long ago to my senior year weightlifting class. A defense mechanism, to be sure. Might I add: I am proud of all my high school stats; Homecoming Queen, Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, surviving the worst prom experience known to mankind, but none so much as completing weightlifting. It may have been my hardest class. May? No, for sure it was. At my high school, gym was required for all four years; the humiliations of public school never cease. Every senior had a choice: Team Sports or Weightlifting. Team Sports? Do you even know me right now? So it was weightlifting with Coach Lacey. Coach Lacey is a man of few words, I would use the word militant, but I'm still sort of scared of him. This man was ALL coach, ALL business, ALL the time. To receive a smile from him was like finding gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow; sufficed to say the "smile" was one part myth two parts legend. To save myself further embarrassment I'll save the gory details of how horrifically bad I started out being. I could not lift the bar, I could not do a squat, I would DREAD going to first period. I would walk around the weight room like I was intending to lift something and then move on when eyes were obverted. At some point I decided to really try like not as a joke, not half-a#$ed. And I ended up LOVING it. I received no smiles from Lacey, BUT I did incur a nickname: Tink (as in Tinkerbell). Not sure how or why, but it was a term of endearment and I'll take it. All this to say: Lacey if you're out there, I think you'd be proud of me at least trying to do Crossfit...maybe I’d even get one of those epic smiles.