I found myself at the end of a long day wrestling with my sweaty exercise clothing. You know the kind of clothing I am referring to, it fits very snuggly to help everything stay in place while you do crazy things like Spiderman pushups and burpees. It is made of stretchy material that doesn't seem to stretch very far after a workout when you are trying to wriggle out of it.
Post workout, the body is clammy and it is in a little bit of distress from the activity. Sometimes the body resents having to turn into a pretzel to get the exercise gear off and there are inevitably grunts and verbiage floating out of the change area. There I was, pretzel-like with my arms criss-crossed in front of me trying to lift that sticky top over my head. I was complaining about my sore arms and announcing to the four walls that I was too old for this. I thought I was alone. Alas, my husband was within hearing and when he was done laughing he told me I wasn't allowed to say I was too old for anything. According to him my issue with getting the crazy exercise gear off was not an age issue it was a mechanical and logistical issue. I was informed that I was removing my top wrong.
The contortions I have been going through my whole life to get shirts over my head and off were all wrong. Imagine that, and it took me over fifty years to find that out. I'm not a pushover so I was not prepared to accept that I had it wrong just based on his say-so. His method of removing a t-shirt was to reach behind him and pull hand over hand behind his neck until that pesky shirt was over his head. I tried, and it was much easier but then I got to wondering how does one learn these kind of things, and did the whole rest of the world do it his way?
When daughter-in-law number one arrived home, I posed the question to her. If you want to stop someone in their tracks ask them "How do you take off your shirt?" Do that without giving them any context for the craziness and watch the look on their face. That's a lesson for another day, the whole concept of building and communicating context to get cooperation. All I was after was enlightenment and possibly a little bit of confirmation that my way was not so wrong. Turns out, she had a third way, which was totally different from the first two we had identified. It involved backing one's arms through the sleeve holes and then lifting the shirt from the inside and the bottom.
At that point it became apparent we were going to have to do some significant sampling to get to the bottom of things. Daughter-in-law left the room to carry on with life. Greg and I looked at each other and headed straight out to the garage to pose the question to our son. We were both on a mission to be right. Turns out we were only seconds behind our daughter-in-law who was relaying our crazy question to our son already. I am sure we just missed them discussing which secure seniors facility to put us both into!
But what the heck, if you are going to be us you might as well have fun. So we asked our son the shirt removal question, and guess what - he has a fourth method for removing a shirt over his head. He places both hands on either side of the neck hole and lifts straight up. Now I have three new alternatives for wriggling out of my sweaty exercise clothing next week and I have given you a whole new conversation starter or stopper! The only thing is that you need to provide the context because people will really wonder what's happened to you and they might think you are actually asking them to remove clothing which could be extremely awkward. Hope you have some fun with it.
Post workout, the body is clammy and it is in a little bit of distress from the activity. Sometimes the body resents having to turn into a pretzel to get the exercise gear off and there are inevitably grunts and verbiage floating out of the change area. There I was, pretzel-like with my arms criss-crossed in front of me trying to lift that sticky top over my head. I was complaining about my sore arms and announcing to the four walls that I was too old for this. I thought I was alone. Alas, my husband was within hearing and when he was done laughing he told me I wasn't allowed to say I was too old for anything. According to him my issue with getting the crazy exercise gear off was not an age issue it was a mechanical and logistical issue. I was informed that I was removing my top wrong.
The contortions I have been going through my whole life to get shirts over my head and off were all wrong. Imagine that, and it took me over fifty years to find that out. I'm not a pushover so I was not prepared to accept that I had it wrong just based on his say-so. His method of removing a t-shirt was to reach behind him and pull hand over hand behind his neck until that pesky shirt was over his head. I tried, and it was much easier but then I got to wondering how does one learn these kind of things, and did the whole rest of the world do it his way?
When daughter-in-law number one arrived home, I posed the question to her. If you want to stop someone in their tracks ask them "How do you take off your shirt?" Do that without giving them any context for the craziness and watch the look on their face. That's a lesson for another day, the whole concept of building and communicating context to get cooperation. All I was after was enlightenment and possibly a little bit of confirmation that my way was not so wrong. Turns out, she had a third way, which was totally different from the first two we had identified. It involved backing one's arms through the sleeve holes and then lifting the shirt from the inside and the bottom.
At that point it became apparent we were going to have to do some significant sampling to get to the bottom of things. Daughter-in-law left the room to carry on with life. Greg and I looked at each other and headed straight out to the garage to pose the question to our son. We were both on a mission to be right. Turns out we were only seconds behind our daughter-in-law who was relaying our crazy question to our son already. I am sure we just missed them discussing which secure seniors facility to put us both into!
But what the heck, if you are going to be us you might as well have fun. So we asked our son the shirt removal question, and guess what - he has a fourth method for removing a shirt over his head. He places both hands on either side of the neck hole and lifts straight up. Now I have three new alternatives for wriggling out of my sweaty exercise clothing next week and I have given you a whole new conversation starter or stopper! The only thing is that you need to provide the context because people will really wonder what's happened to you and they might think you are actually asking them to remove clothing which could be extremely awkward. Hope you have some fun with it.
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