on being athletic at 50

Maybe if I had the training, skill, genes ... when I was younger, I'd be in better shape today.

Were you athletic in your younger years? I wasn't. Is being athletic an innate behaviour? Are we born natural athletes? Is it a genetic thing? I came from a family of 3 girls. My Dad wasn't an athlete, he wasn't even interested in watching TV sports, he was more interested in watching Don Messer and Ed Sullivan on TV.

I always wanted to be athletic, and boy did I try, but to no avail, was not meant to be.

My parents never pushed me into sports, probably because they didn't have the interest in it, or they knew at the outset, that I wasn't going to aspire to be an athlete.

I tried the swimming thing, I went to the old Plant Bath on Somerset Street, does anyone remember that place? I think its still there. Aside from remembering that place, that's where I went to learn to swim. I never did receive my swimming badge (that would have been beginner badge), because I didn't have the skill, aptitude, athletic ability, whatever you call it to tread water. Everyone else seemed to be able to, and then moved on in life to be lifeguards. I could never figure out why I couldn't, and no one told me either. So, swimming wasn't my thing. I moved on.

I tried downhill skiing, my parents even bought me the gear, not because they thought i would some day be an Olympian, but because i probably whined and said I could do it. So, off we went to the ski hill, way out on Prince of Wales Drive, where Jack May is today. When I drive by there today, I try to locate a hill, but I don't see a hill that I could have possibly skied down. More like a little ant hill, that didn't require any effort in walking up with skis nor skiing down. Anyhow, back to then, I even had an instructor, or so my parents said they were. This instructor taught me the snow plow, boy was I scared, I thought I was going 100 mph down that hill, which today I now know wasn't a hill. I wasn't going 100 mph, I was probably just inching along. But before I snow plowed down, i had to get up this enormous, what I thought then, hill. That was a feat in itself, up an inch, down a foot, this usually took me the entire lesson to get up the hill, and maybe one snow plow down and it was over. As you can well imagine, this didn't work for me either.

So, off I went to learn cross country skiing. My parents decided at that point that they wouldn't invest any more moula in teachers or instructions, they never said why, they just didn't. I probably should have realized then, that they knew more about my athletic ability than I did. So, I was a self taught cross country skier. My parents did offer to pay for my cross country skis. I went one day cross country skiing with a boy that liked me. The land we ventured out on wasn't treacherous nor hilly, it was pretty flat. However, my pole got stuck on some tall grass, I pulled, and pulled to try and release the pole, and then finally, POW, the pole released and hit me in the eye. Not the pointy end, the blunt end, and I ended up with a black eye. Cross country skiing wasn't for me.

Believe me, I tried it all, and there's more stories and experiences, but in the end I've come to realize, that being an athlete is being born an athlete from the get go. And that explains alot, on who I am and what I do when I'm 50+.

Until next time

Me.