Category: commentary

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Death By Rotation

spinI knew within the first ten minutes that I would not survive. My body simply wasn’t made for that kind of endurance, or if it was then I haven’t kept it in tip-top shape over the past few years. A few cookies here and there. Some cookies and cream ice cream on occasion. You know how it is. Then I decided to try and get back in shape after several years of neglect, and my body said, “Nuh-unh. No way. Not me.” After ten minutes on that stationary bike, my mind was in complete agreement with my body.

I went spinning tonight. If you don’t know what it is, spinning is the equivalent of old school stationary biking… kicked up a notch, as Emeril would say. It’s an hour of hearing the instructor yell at you as if you’re deaf. And she’s shouting things like “Now turn up the resistance,” and “Go at your own pace, but make sure you hit 100.” Um, yeah. My own pace is a sedate 45, and I was quite proud of it until I noticed everyone else in the class going quite a bit faster. Perhaps they were even hitting 100. I told myself they weren’t, to make me feel better.

It all started five years ago when we had a “health awareness” day at the school I taught at. These folks from the local gym came with eight spinning bikes, and my friend Rebecca talked me into trying it out with her after lunch. That was my first mistake. Needless to say they had to clean up the gym floor after my ride. My second mistake was thinking that it would be a piece of cake. It was not. I did everything the instructor said, but she screamed at us and challenged us to keep going past the point where I wanted to just fall off the bike and fade into the floor.

And I was sore for days afterward. My family went to a water park on the next day and I wanted to just sit in those water tubes and rest my bottom for the whole day. Instead I was chasing after my three-year old as she wanted to go on every single ride available to her. Oh yeah, and hurting with every single step I took. You see, spinning takes it out of your rear end, but also out of your legs. My legs literally felt like jello as I tried to run and keep up with the little munchkin. I told myself never again. Continue reading “Death By Rotation”

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1/3rd Of Me

Why are we so often surprised when acquaintances prove to be more than we envisioned they could be? When I told a marginal acquaintance today that I was excited to have a third grader in the fall, she looked more shocked than I had seen anyone be lately. Apparently to her I was the sum … Continue reading 1/3rd Of Me

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The Race Conversation

raceconversation“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.” ~Lyndon B. Johnson

I never really cared about race, but race was always concerned with me. Maybe because I was born black, or perhaps because I was born in this country, or probably both. Definitely both. There’s just something to be said about being that “other” that is contrasted with the majority, that absence of color when compared with the presence of all color. I mean, that’s what white is, right? The presence of all color. So why isn’t it all-inclusive? And why should any of it matter anyway?

The United States has been characterized as this great big “melting pot,” where people from all backgrounds and ethnicities are welcome and appreciated, as this giant quilt that stitches people together and creates something new and incredible from each pattern. Yet more often than not it is instead a middle school lunchroom with its cliques and ostracizing behavior. Now, while race isn’t the only dividing line, it is still one of the thickest. And I don’t think I’ll ever understand why.

But that’s a conversation for another time.

What’s important to me at this exact moment is my children having to deal with these issues without really understanding them. Continue reading “The Race Conversation”