If you’re one of my friends and you do Yoga, you’re
a lovely person and the following statement does not pertain to you. All I’m
saying is that on occasion, I run into a particularly holier-than-thou Person
Who Does Yoga, and the encounter inspires me to scream at them (in my head), “Oh, you do Yoga??? Well, by God, why didn’t you say so sooner? Please give me
your address so I can mail you your framed Better Person Award post-haste!” I am not trying gin up controversy or be deliberately
contrarian here, but I truly do not like Yoga. I’ve given it numerous attempts,
and all it does is make me want to crawl out of my skin. My body and brain simply
refuse to cooperate. I don’t find it centering or relaxing. And I’m a physically
restless person (not to be confused in any way with being an athletic person),
so if I’m going to spend time exercising, I want to do something fast-moving
with resistance, like swimming or the elliptical. I have a lot of nervous
energy to discharge and I need to move. I
need to wear myself out physically to feel better emotionally. That I find centering. Sitting still in
a dark room and getting frustrated because my body is fundamentally incapable
of doing a single Yoga move is not. Also, I could do without the self-righteous
lectures of the instructors. It’s none of their business if I ate half a bag of
Hot Cheetos for lunch.
All my life, I’ve had that “reader” curse. You
know the one I mean—the curse of constantly mispronouncing common words because
you spend all of your time indoors reading instead of fraternizing with other
human beings, therefore you make up how certain words sound, and then get really
embarrassed when someone points out to you that you’re saying it all wrong. I
have this with “gesture”—I’m never really sure if it’s pronounced “jester” or “guess-ture," and a whole slew of other words that I can’t recall at the moment. I learned of
another one last night, when, in a conversation with Mr. Typist, I pronounced
the word “voluptuous” as “volumptious," much to his cackling delight. He gleefully pointed out that I have a life-long
habit of mis-saying that word, and he’s right. He has his own theory as to why—he
insists that I am mixing it up with “voluminous," but I disagree. I think it’s
because a word such as “voluptuous”, “meaning “full of, characterized by, or
ministering to indulgence in luxury, pleasure, and sensuous enjoyment," needs
to have a soft “m” sound in there. “Voluptuous” is a really clunky word that
does not adequately reflect its delightful meaning. It needs that soft “m” to
fill it out and give it a nice, warm, downy feel. (By the way, I know this antecedent may make
Mr. Typist seem mean or insensitive, but it didn’t go down that way at all. I was
laughing my arse off so hard during the whole conversation I almost fell out of
my chair.)
Besides arguing over the proper pronunciation of
relatively arcane words, Mr. Typist and I watched the 1978 movie “Grease” on Netflix
last night. I remember seeing it in the theater as a very young Ms. Typist, and
being absolutely captivated by it. I wanted nothing more than to be in a lady
gang and wear a pink satin jacket and have a bad boyfriend with greasy hair and
a fast car. So it was really fun to re-visit the movie from an adult
perspective. While watching the movie last
night, I marveled to myself that if 1/10th of the sh*t that went
down at Rydell High in 1959 went down at any high school ever in 2017, there
would be a national scandal and about 11,000 lawsuits. Cases in point: The shop
teacher accompanying her students to an illegal drag race, the relentless bullying
of the hapless Eugene, rampant underage drinking and driving, not to mention sexual harassment and student-on-student violence. Nonetheless, shockingly,
those thirty-five-year-old teenagers came out of it all unscathed and were able to
do a silly dance at the graduation carnival. People were tougher back then.
Other random notes: My favorite female character
is Frenchy by far. My favorite male character is Danny Zuko, since I have a
soft spot for dim-witted but essentially good-hearted men. “Grease” probably
has the best opening credit sequence of any film made before or since. And
finally, Frankie Avalon singing “Beauty School Drop-Out” in those tight white
pants is nothing less than divine. At any rate, enjoy this funny, dark take on Grease
in 2017:
--Kristen
McHenry
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