Exercise Superhero

Sometimes when I exercise, I get motivated by pretending I'm a superhero. I don't try to do this, but rather, I think the adrenaline creates a false sense of importance in my brain. I like when this happens, because it's like a free movie staring ME! and it also takes my mind off the act of exercising.

This morning I wasn't so much of a superhero as I was Dance Champion of the World. The weather's been crappy lately, zapping any and all motivation I have for going outside to exercise. So, I dusted off my Dance Dance Revolution pad and played DDRMAX on the Playstation. For those that don't know what this is, it's a dancing game where you step on arrows on a pad (think Nintendo Power Pad) that correspond to the arrows that are shown on the screen. If you're good, it looks like you're dancing. If you're bad, you look like your leg fell asleep and you're trying to stomp on an ant hill. After about 10 minutes of stomping around ("Thank God you don't have downstairs neighbors", says my cousin Emily) the adrenaline starts pumping and suddenly I'm in an arcade, battling it out in a head-to-head DDR match with some young whippersnapper. There is a crowd around us, people have been watching for hours. When I first accepted the challenge to battle the DDR King of the Arcade, people gasped. Others stiffled an embarrassed laughter. Fat women in the crowd shouted, "You go Girl!" Now I'm dancing my way to victory and this 16-year old pimple-faced twerp is crying for mercy. Inevitably, people carry me out of the arcade on their shoulders, shouting my name and throwing roses at me.

My superhero fantasy happens when I run. I used to run along the Charles River in Cambridge. As I approached the Mass Ave. bridge, I'd envision an infant being flung over the rail into the dirty water below. My instincts would kick in and I would do a perfect swan dive into the raging river and surface triumphantly with the infant. Sometimes the infant would cry out, alerting his frantic mother above above that he was ok. Other times, he wouldn't respond, and then I'd have to swim to shore, holding the infant over my head, and then perform CPR on him, ultimately saving his life. Inevitably, people would carry me down Memorial Drive on their shoulders, shouting my name, and throwing roses at me.