A Bit of Workout Humour – By Mark Marony

After three months of convalescing from major surgery—during which exertion was limited to putting on thigh-high white circulation stockings­­—I looked like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. My doctor recommended daily walks.


On my first morning out, my neighbor George doubled back, stopped his truck beside me and rolled down the window. “Car break down?”


“Nope, just walking.” I replied.


George, who walks the equivalent of the Appalachian Trail around his 120-acre farm every day, frowned. “Get in. I’ll give you a ride.”


I told him it was doctor’s orders. I needed to regain my strength and stamina.


“Get in,” George repeated. “I’ll give you a ride.”


After a stop at the general store for coffee and doughnuts, I returned home from the first day of my new exercise routine having walked the distance of a peewee football field and eaten two glazed doughnuts. So began my case of workout humor.


On day two, it was the same story, different neighbor. When George’s cousin Carl stopped, I politely declined, explaining I had to lose weight.


“Yeah, that’s what George said,” Carl said, nodding. “But I wanted to see for myself.”


We looked at each other in awkward silence.


I climbed in, and we headed to town for coffee and doughnuts.


Two weeks into my journey to the new, healthier me, I had walked all of a single mile and gained seven pounds. I could barely fit into my nylons.


As a last-ditch effort to avoid my well-intentioned but sabotaging neighbors, I set the alarm for 4 a.m. Now even if I accepted a ride, it was too early for breakfast.


With an LED light strapped to my head and a sturdy walking stick in hand, I headed into the gloom. I quickly discovered that, even in my 40s, I am still afraid of the dark. Every snapping twig became a stalking fisher cat; every shadow hid a marauding mountain lion. With my recent fattening, I was no doubt a tempting treat for the hungry beasts that lurked around me.


To scare off the packs of wild dogs that were certainly circling me, I would randomly swing the walking stick over my head and growl loudly. For good measure, I threw in some flailing karate kicks. Unfortunately, I scared only Loraine, Carl’s wife, who happened to be on her front porch witnessing my wild spectacle.


By the time Irv, our local constable, picked me up in the cruiser, I had lost my headlamp and walking stick, as well as my way in the dark. He brought me to the station, poured me a cup of coffee and offered me a doughnut. I ate two.


On the way home, he stopped at his garage and pulled a barely used treadmill out from under a pile of winter coats, offering it to me in return for a promise never to go walking before daybreak again—at least not while wielding a walking stick, growling, kicking, and wearing a headlamp and thigh-high stockings.