I remember standing next to the edge of what seemed an impossibly high play structure in Lion's Park willing myself to jump off. The goal? To break my leg. I was eight years old, and a broken leg sounded far less painful than another go-round with the Presidential Fitness Tests that were looming. If you're a graduate of any American public school, you'll know what I'm talking about. Six athletic events that will tell you--and everyone else--whether you are a Fit Winner! or a Fat Loser.
That I still remember all six--The Mile, the 50-yard dash, the shuttle run, the standing broad jump, the bent arm hang, and sit-ups--should tell you how indelibly the process is welded in my brain. Of the six, I could manage a good showing in sit-ups alone. My nemesis was The Mile--running four times around Lincoln School, trying to keep up with one of the "good" runners and failing miserably. I don't think I was ever anything but dead last. Built for speed I am not, and when that was combined with asthma, it's a wonder I didn't have the courage to follow through on the leg-breaking idea. The two weeks of testing in the fall and spring of each year were some of the most dreaded in my young life.
All of which is a long way of getting to the ironic bit. Connery came home from school yesterday in a state of high excitement, having taken part in his first-ever Presidential Fitness Contest (apparently it's a contest now, not a test). He scored in the top range on his first test--sit-ups--and was gunning for the top in the other events to come. "Not many first graders can get the award, but I think I can do it," he told me. "We get to run a mile!"
I am so relieved that he is excited about these tests. May it ever be thus. May he always be the kid who can finish strong. On the other hand, I am bemused to think of his joy in this movement when I contrast it with how terrible the very same events used to make me feel. Based on physical activity alone, Connery is no more "fit" than I was at his age. If anything, he may get a little less physical activity than I did simply because I was raised in the good ol', go-out-and-play 1970s. I did ballet and ice skating and basketball and martial arts and biking; he does soccer and basketball and scootering
The difference is that Connery is, most mysteriously, built like a miniature professional athlete. The kid's got washboard abs and visible muscles in his legs, arms, and shoulders--at 6! Despite his asthma, he can run for an hour and barely get winded. Watching him makes me question how he could be of my genetic material, akin perhaps to the person who can't carry a tune in a bucket seeing her child become an opera star.
So we'll train like he wants to. We'll go to the park and let him do pull-ups and measure out fifty yards and have him run back and forth. And I will never, ever let him know that he is freaking me out by succeeding in something that I never could.
