I’m rushing to try out a new exercise class called Surf Set.  This is the latest in a string of crazy schemes I’ve been trying to break up the monotony of working out.  First was Bikram yoga where I got dehydrated to point of having hallucinations. That lasted until a realized that it takes me at least 30 minutes to stop sweating after a lunch class. Not a great look when I get back to the office.  I then switched to doing Yogaglo, a site that has online streaming yoga class but it started to feel like I was watching soft porn and it messed with my focus.  Next I moved to Soul Cycle, I stationary spin class across the street where disco music and the lower Manhattan mom mafia rules.  Now it’s on to a pilates class on a surfboard.  I’m late and I throw the car into the closest and the most expensive lot.  I run into the class, throw down my water bottle and take the only surfboard left.  I like the atmosphere.  Everybody’s having fun trying to balance on boards perched up on little air-filled-rubber-bladder-looking things. There’s an old surf movie being projected on the wall and  I just want to sit and watch it quietly with a big margarita.  The instructor is central casting from that teen surf movie where the girl gets her arm bitten off by a shark and still goes on to love and live with purpose.  They haven’t quite thought out all the moves yet with this discipline and I tweak my back something fierce. I suffer through the rest of the class, trying not to loose face and I only make my back worst.  By the time I get home I’m frozen stiff, like the Hudson river in February.  My wife’s a trained chiropractor. Maybe I can get session after she finishes watching Survivor. I have at least one other posting about my back going out. I need to pay attention to this trend.

It’s Sunday and yes my back still bothering me.  I decide to do something low impact and unpack a bunch of CD’s that I haven’t used since iTunes was invented. Last time I played them I didn’t need glasses to read the covers.  Human eyes are like a car batteries, they last a long time but they loose their charge over time. I put on an old Cure CD and sit down to write.  In an effort to remain in a blissful state of denial about aging, I choose to keep increasing the font size while I’m typing. Thing 1 sits down next to me and is memorized by the act of typing.  “Do the keys go in order of ABC’s?” she asks.  “No, they threw them everywhere. For instance A-S-D-G are all next to each other. It’s craziness!”
“Then how do you find them?”, she asks.
“Practice.”
Then I start to question what skills I have that are of worthy of passing on.  Time for another list:
1. I can type but I don’t know if I can teach it.
2. I can surf and can probably teach them how but no one can teach a little girl how to love cold water.
3. I know a great oatmeal cookie when I taste it but that’s not a life skill.
4. I could teach them all about social media marketing but I’d like for them to contribute to the world in some meaningful way.
5. I’m good at telling people bad news but I don’t want them to be morticians… even though “Six Feet Under” kind of made it cool to be a mortician.

I decide to teach them some yoga.  It will be good for my back and it will be like playing twister.