Ballet legs and back dolphins

Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Go with the flow.
Be one with the chlorine.
Get in touch with your inner mermaid.

Kip
Pike
Tuck
Scull

Thank heaven for the written tests of my Phys. Ed. years. How satisfying to know the rules of tennis, basketball, volleyball, golf, field hockey, and softball! Without the opportunity to ace those tests and counter my failing skills tests, I never would have passed P.E. You would think I'd have nightmares about being an AARP member trapped forever in junior high gym class wearing a dorky light blue bloomer gymsuit with my name written in laundry marker on the pocket. Instead, I'm trapped in Viking Navigation.

Physical fitness is a fabulous idea, especially when balanced with the concept of "recess". Kids need to experience organized sports, but it is essential that they have time to run, stretch, and create their own games. The social and physical benefits acquired while playing jacks and jumping rope are equal to any adult-led league/trophy sport. Does a child learn more hanging from his knees and pretending the jungle gym is an apartment building for gorillas, space aliens, pirates, and princesses or by wearing a batting helmet and pounding ants with her baseball bat in a chain-link dugout?

All of my personal highlights reels occurred in the Wonder Bread years. Since I believed that Lyndon Johnson would personally review my performance, I trained to stun my P.E. teacher in both the sit-up and pull-up events of the President's Physical Fitness tests. When I actually caught a fly ball in deep, deep, deep center field, the entire addled isxth grade class had to be scraped off the playground with spatulas.

My friend will be having extensive kidney tests in the morning. When I send positive vibes, they keep swimming out of their groovy cosmic Age of Aquarius lanes. The first motel swim pool in my childhood memory was a kidney-shaped pool in Topeka. The sky was gray and heading toward lightning. My swimsuit was a one-piece shrimp pink and coral "bubble suit". My bathing cap had a cluster of color-coordinated sea-anemone rubber flowers and an irritating chinstrap.

Please visualize your kidneys as twin swimming pools with perfectly synchronized swimmers backstroking in lovely sequinned costumes and aquafabulosa headware! Add a halo of tiny bubbles.

Requirements of synchronized swimming include wearing a noseclip and a hair bun, which is kept in place with unflavored Knox gelatin. When one is truly in the white light and the flow, it is easy to perform ballet legs, back dolphins, and other cosmic synchro routines.



recess
1531, "act of receding," from L. recessus "a going back, retreat," from recessum, pp. of recedere "to recede" (see recede). Meaning "hidden or remote part" first recorded 1616; that of "period of stopping from usual work" is from 1620, probably from parliamentary notion of "recessing" into private chambers. The verb is from 1809.