On my mind

I have been on vacation. This is the last in a series of vignettes written in the mid- to late 90’s, at a time when I still entertained hopes of earning money writing. As they say in the media, “regular programming will resume” on Sept. 10, 2004.

STALKING THE TV PATH TO BETTER HEALTH

I did everything just like the book said I should. Turned on the TV. Switched it to the video channel. Inserted the cassette. Adjusted the tape speed. Changed to channel 30. And waited. And waited. But once again the system got the better of me, sent my good intentions down the drain.

I’d intended to tape an exercise show. So I could do the exercises early in the morning, when it’s cooler, rather than in the middle of the day, when it’s at its hottest, which is when the show airs on local TV. But as had happened so many times before, it didn’t work out that way. I’d been off an exercise schedule for quite some time. All my energies focussed on quitting smoking. And with a 40-year habit to break, that took a lot of time, and effort. In the meantime, I’d put on 30 lbs., more or less. Well, mostly more.

But now I was ready to get back on track. Get that heart pumping. The blood coursing through my arteries. Air back into the lungs. And all those extra calories burnt off.

What I call “my” exercise show (“Bodies in Motion”)—because it was one I could relate to—it didn’t have that awful thumping music, there wasn’t some smarmy blond female telling me I was doing great, and I could actually do most of the exercises, at least after a fashion—used to come on in the morning at the same time as the local news on the radio.

This nice, serious, sincere, young man with Latin good looks (dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin) and just a trace of a foreign accent holding forth on a tropical beach, swaying palms and curling waves in the background.
Sometimes his mother, proudly exercising along with her son, was part of the group, and sometimes it would be his sister.

The 7am timeslot meant that I could listen to the news and exercise at the same time—a very efficient use of time, I always thought. Of course, since I had the sound on the exercise show turned down, I couldn’t hear those helpful little hints he’d throw in like, “now it’s twice with the left and twice with the right—that’s right, one, two, one, two, and now once with the right and once with the left, and now let’s go back to twice….” So once in a while, I’d lose part of the news as I struggled to keep up with what was happening on the screen. But since I always watched the TV news that night, and read the papers during the day, I’d never missed anything major.

I couldn’t do anything else while I was listening to the news anyway, so I might as well exercise. But as is to be expected, particularly here, just when things seem to be working out, something goes wrong. And so it did with my exercise show. It got dropped from the schedule.

And even though I called the station to complain, tried to explain how important the show was to my daily health regime, and to explain the havoc changing my schedule would cause, the show stayed off the air. I even put my protest in writing. And wrote to the originating station in Hawaii, asking if I couldn’t buy copies of their half-hour segments. But my pleas were all ignored.

I finally re-found my show—being aired at 2pm that didn’t do me any good at all. I’m never home at 2pm and I haven’t mastered setting my VCR to tape automatically at some preset time. I gave up trying to exercise with the TV. You’d think the weight I was gaining would have motivated me all the more, but you’re wrong. I was too angry when I realized that after I’d made the truly awesome sacrifice of giving up smoking, more sacrifice was expected. The sacrifice of giving up eating all my favorite foods like butter, chocolate, peanuts, soft drinks, whole milk, roquefort and blue cheese dressing. Foods that had begun to taste even better, now that I’d stopped smoking. Foods I’d been able to consume without gaining an ounce before when the nicotine kept my metabolism in high gear. And on top of all that, I was supposed to be a masochist, and fight the vagaries of the TV to find an exercise show AND take the time out to exercise? I’m only human.

I stayed angry about a year.

Finally, I was forced to admit that I wasn’t going to get any thinner without effort, so once again I took up the challenge of trying to find the least painful way to exercise available. Since I had learned how to tape a show I was watching, I did have a handful of segments of “my” exercise show on a cassette.

For a while, I used those. But it didn’t take long before that got VERY boring. The jokes about his parrot weren’t cute anymore, his concern for the pregnant exerciser became trite and condescending, and I was tired of doing the same old routine in the same old sequence.

So I bought a new TV schedule, and spent hours poring over the listings in search of an alternate exercise show scheduled at a reasonable hour of the morning. It wasn’t easy. Was “Step Reebok” an exercise show, or a commercial? What about “Body-shaping”? “Max Out”? I didn’t have to worry about “Mousercise” because I don’t subscribe to the Disney Channel. But there was still “Cable Health Club.” “Getting Healthy.” “7-Day Workout.” “Everyday Workout.” “Easy Does it.” “Fitness Pros.”

I finally settled on “Everyday Workout.” The lady is blond, true, but she’s a Canadian blond, not a Hollywood blond. And when the exercises are too tough, she dubs in, simultaneously, an easier alternative. The show isn’t on during the news, so I can turn up the TV and listen to her.

It even gets sort of interesting at times, when she counts down to a change in Greek, or Swedish, or Russian.

Once I started exercising again, I began alternating—a day or two with the new lady’s show, a day or two with the old taped show. (I’m only doing it three days a week—I figure it took me a year to add all that weight, and it will take a year to take it off, so I can afford to build up gradually.)

Once again, however, our own equivalent of OOG (Only On Guam) intervened.

On a Monday a few weeks ago, I decided to work with the lady. Put on my exercise bra, my running shoes, turned on the TV—and waited. And waited and waited. No “Everyday Workout.” By that time it was late, and I was hungry, so I gave up, and had breakfast. Only later, when I remembered that I’d run into a similar situation once before, was I able to figure out what had happened. Off-island shows reach Guam a week late. They are shown there and then sent to Saipan. Now they are a week and a day late.

Shows that run from Monday through Friday on the mainland are run here from Tuesday through Saturday. And sure enough, the following Saturday, there was the Friday session of “Everyday Workout” in its usual weekday time slot.

I’ve since found the sister’s version of “my” show. According to the TV schedule, it’s on at 11:30am. It’s too hot to exercise by then, but I am sometimes home at that hour, so I decided to tape a few segments of it, just to relieve the boredom of the brother’s show. As yet, however, I’ve been unsuccessful. Not because my VCR doesn’t work. But because on the days I try to tape it, it hasn’t aired—even though the TV schedule continues to show it due to come on at 11:30am every day, five days a week.

I know there are other ways to exercise without having to rely on TV.

Like walking. Dance or jazzexercise. Hotel health clubs. But those all require that I show myself in public. Or meet someone else’s rigid time schedule. I prefer exercising in the privacy of my own home, thank-you, and at my own convenience.

And I’ve tried one of those ski-motion treadmill-type machines. But that gets more boring more quickly than doing the same 30-minute tape five days in a row.

With the imminent arrival of the information highway on our doorstep, it should, at least in theory, be simplicity itself to find an appropriate and consistently reliable exercise show on which to base one’s health regime.

But if that’s true, why am I having so much trouble?

(The writer is a librarian by profession, and a long-term resident of the CNMI. To contact her, send e-mail to ruth.tighe@saipan.com.)