Recess!!

Play time is over, kids.

Day three started with the usual walk-run torture techniques. The time keeper maintained time. I watched my life flash before my eyes, etc...

As he had on day one and two, the professional had some extra time for us to get back to the basics.

Skipping, hopping, playing....

Likes kids on the playground.

Remember way back when kids actually played at recess? When skipping, jumping, and cartwheels were part of the scene on any given school yard? Kids prayed for a never ending recess. Maybe the teachers would get so involved in talking they would forget to look at their watch. They would be too involved to blow the whistle.

Remember that?

It was the same thing. Kinda.

Except, instead of praying for a never ending recess, I was praying for God to blow out my knee or break my ankle. Something. Anything.

Arduous is not a sufficient word. Wicked, maybe.

Maybe.

I don't think that the professional was trying to kill me. Perhaps, he was just trying to take me close.

So I could come back from the edge of death.

So I could proclaim that it only made me stronger.

What happened? What was so terrible? What was worthy of a call to a child abuse hot-line?

Skipping.

Yes. Skipping.

Back and forth. Between two light posts. 900 times. I think.

But it wasn't the same sweet and innocent skipping we did back in the day. It was some twisted, sadistic, angry version.

It was a cross between a skip and the Hitler march. I'm sure it has a name. Like, 'Hell march,' or 'death skip.'

I know, I know... It sounds as if he made me carry boulders back and forth as in some communist prison work camp. It seems that way because that's what it felt like.

Skipping and saluting, repeatedly, hurts. Hurts bad.

But that wasn't the worst part in my morning...

What came next made me wish I was happy being fat.

Again, what could be so terrible that I prayed for mercy in the form of death?

Side steps.

Quick, hoppy, side steps.

It was on my second lap that I prayed for the ligaments in my knee to shred to pieces.


Perhaps I could fall and break my arm. Fine time for a heart attack.

It was torture. Absolute physical torture.

Someone call the CIA and tell them one of their interrogators has escaped.

These two exercises seem so childish and simple. It seems silly to whine about them.

I know I asked for this.

If I can not do a simple act of play then I need to keep trying until I love it like a six-year-old. 

Keep doing it until I want to do it on my free time.

I need to do it until I pray that the recess whistle doesn't blow.

I need this.

I'll go back for more.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.


Maybe.

But whatever I do I will do it with all my might.