This Year I Resolve To...

           

          It’s on again!  The excited and determined hordes are once again descending on local gyms.  Zumba classes are filling up faster than a samba, rumba or salsa can thump out the beat, bikes are being lined up for spinning lessons and membership at all exercise venues is experiencing its usual spike for the new year.

          For at least the next six weeks, gyms across the country will be filled to overflowing with bright eyed, eager new members wanting to get rid of those excess pounds piled on during the holiday season and to firm up muscles that have long forgotten words like ‘well-toned.’ 

          These eager beavers will run miles on treadmills, pedal up and down countless hills and push and pull various pieces of equipment all to regain some of the bodies they left behind six or more months ago and all because ‘getting fit and healthy’ is on their list of New Year’s Resolutions.

          I love these New Year gym fanatics, I really do.  A healthy work-out should be part of everyone’s weekly routine.  If not to retain that youthful figure that most of us can now only dream about, then to at least make doctors happy and visits to their clinics fewer and further apart.  And, although, all these new additions to the gyms make it more difficult for regular members to access equipment, hey, let’s not be mean about sharing the health!

          But what about those newbies who, after ten minutes on a treadmill, decide that a gym is the very best place to arrange their social calendar?  The ones who straddle a bike and wax poetic about the next party they’ll be attending and would their neighbor on the adjoining bike care to join them? 

          I sat open-mouthed on a machine that guaranteed my arms to turn into tight and gorgeous appendages in no time, while a fairly hefty young man did tummy crunches on an abs machine…with his cell phone pressed between his ear and shoulder recounting his exploits for all and sundry.  It seemed that he’d had met a fantastic lady at his New Year’s party and hoped to see her again.  Isn’t that nice?

          Of course New Year’s resolutions don’t stop at gym memberships.  There’s the, ‘this year I’m going to save loads of money,’ which lasts for as long as it takes to access Amazon, Ebay or other web sites to check out their latest sales; and there’s the  old time favorite, ‘I’m going to lower my cholesterol by only eating grass and twigs for the next twelve months.’  This one lasts just long enough for the aroma of sizzling steak or frying chicken to hit the nose and even mighty resolve disappears into the mist.

          When I was a kid, on New Year’s Eve, my mother would entertain us with an old European custom.  At a few minutes before midnight, she melted a small bar of lead into a saucepan.  Then, when the lead was soft as liquid silver, she quickly poured the lot into a bucket of cold water.  The resulting blob was your fortune for the coming year.  Many minutes would be spent deciphering just what your particular blob meant…something resembling a boat meant a trip…something looking like a musical instrument meant you’d be attending concerts or learning to play said instrument.  It was fun and best of all, it didn’t put any pressure on the participants.  If the ‘fortune’ didn’t happen as predicted, well obviously the blob had been incorrectly deciphered, but not your fault and better luck next year.

          So, for all of you who didn’t have a lead blob to decipher this New Year’s Eve, who instead made resolutions that have already slipped into a murky haze or are soon about to make that trip…don’t feel bad…there is always next year.  In the meantime, the equipment at my gym will once again be available to me without waiting in line for it…my arms will get tight and if my bum also follows suit all will be well with the world.