SILVER SNEAKERS (essay)

My supplemental insurance sent me a card to go to a
gym free. It’s called Silver Sneakers. I put that card
away for more than a year until one day, when
passing the gym, I decided to go inside to see if
anyone, wondering if I had wandered away from
home, would call the cops. Maybe if I dyed my hair it
might help, but instead I insist on growing old and
letting my crown turn super white.

I decided to hire a Physical Trainer, Glen, a nice
young man, 42, tall and thin with long arms and legs.
I’m 5’2” or used to be, with very short arms and legs,
not thin. With his help I realized that glutes was not
short for Gluten, abs not a synonym for Arabs. He
measured how much of my body weight was fat and
didn’t even run as he told me. I found parts of me I
didn’t know I had, as they came alive screeching in
pain.

When we lay on our backs, so intimately, on the floor,
he turned his long right leg over his middle to touch
that knee to the floor on the left side of his body, and
wanted me to do it. I looked deep into his eyes and
said that in one of my past lives I was Uma
Thurman’s twin sister and asked if he had ever seen
the movie Kill Bill? He said, “Yes.”

I responded, “Your new name is Bill.”