Tag Archives: perspiration

Balmy

Balmy:(adj) pleasantly warm weather.Dictionary B

I will take the risk of speaking ideals. (After all, being idealistic is a tedious journey to frustration. At least when you’re pessimistic, you’ve already arrived.)

But taking a chance on musing the magnificent, let me say that when it comes to the subject of weather, I find the perfect to be simple.

It should never be so hot–or balmy–that you’re sitting without moving, and sweating.

Likewise, it should never be so cold that while sitting, you shiver.

Whatever that temperature may be in whatever climate or particular nation, there is the ideal.

Because even though I have found myself in regions which are deemed to be tropical paradises, they were always infested with bugs, buzzing things, and sweat.

  • Yes, the sun is warm.
  • Yes, the sky is blue.
  • And yes, I am melting.

Likewise, growing up in the Midwest, there were four or five months during the year when I either needed to grow fur or cover myself with it. I could not go outside without freezing and once inside, found it difficult to thaw out at an adequate pace.

So without being a complainer, I will tell you that for about two or three weeks every year–in whatever area of the country–I escape the perspiration of balmy and the icicles of frigid, and find the ability to sit and enjoy the air without interruption or being accosted by insects and snow.

 

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Albatross

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Albatross: (n) 1. a very large oceanic bird, some with wingspans of more than ten feet, found mostly in southern oceans. 2. a source of frustration: e.g. the albatross of marriage.

I have an albatross–something hanging around my neck, dragging me down, or at least, making my journey cumbersome.

I don’t like to admit it, because rationalizing the cause and effect is one of my great joys in life–of which I have become extremely proficient.

Yes, vice can quickly become our voice if we don’t silence its raging.

You see, here’s the problem–it’s not really an evil. It’s more of a condition. But what I fail to realize is that every condition is viewed by others to be a vice if they are not also plagued by it, but instead, stand on the sidelines and comment on the error in my trials.

I’m fat.

I’ve always been fat. Being born at twelve-and-a-half pounds, I got a jump-start on large diapers and husky pants.

When I was younger, it was intriguing because I could spin my obesity as “power, might and strength.” I don’t know if I was actually successful at communicating my image, but I convinced myself that I was just “big-boned and muscular.”

After all, it didn’t keep me from achieving my goals. It certainly didn’t hinder my interaction with the ladies.

But now I realize there’s a missing element in my understanding of myself, because I will never know exactly what I could have achieved had I taken the time to figure out how to “lighten the load” of my wagon.

  • How many people passed on hearing my message because they were even temporarily put off by the packaging?
  • On how many occasions did I burst into perspiration when others were standing around, cool as a cucumber, thus making it clear that I had strained myself due to my circumference?
  • And what is the mysterious number of decisions I made to avoid certain possibilities because inwardly I felt they were too strenuous for my frame?

An albatross is an awkward bird. It gives me pause today … how much higher I could have flown … as an eagle.

Acrobat

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcrobat: (n.) an entertainer who performs gymnastic feats.

I had a flash-back.

When I was in high school, so many bronze ages ago, it was mandatory to take two years of physical education. I put them off until my junior and senior years. (I don’t know if I was hoping for a lazy state legislature to repeal the law, or perhaps that the gymnasium would collapse from the onslaught of a Midwest tornado, but I delayed.)

I was a big, fat boy. I liked to play sports until it became obvious that it was exercise. Does that make sense? In other words, if you wanted to go out and throw the football around or shoot some hoops, I was there. But if you were gonna line up and purposefully use your muscles in a way that produced exertion and perspiration with no immediate pay-off of sinking a basket or tackling a friend, well … I was rather non-enthusiatic.

ESPECIALLY during the six-week period of physical education when we did gymnastics.

I was no acrobat. I was the kind of person that if I slipped and fell down a hill, it actually appeared that there was a person falling uncontrollably down the hill, as opposed to gracefully tumbling and landing on my feet. Any motion that I took towards the ground ended up in a splat instead of a forward roll.

I hated it.

I tried to get out of it by insisting that my parents were too poor to afford my gym clothes. I even tricked my mom into giving me a note to give to the instructor, telling him that I was physically unable to perform the feats.

It was unsuccessful. Amazingly, these small-town educators saw through my ploys.

The most embarrassing part of it was the fact that there was no privacy. When it was time to tumble, we formed a line which ran in a perpetual circle, so that each person could come and tumble on the mat, regain his feet, and get back into line to do it again, until everybody had done at least FOUR of them.

Some guys were just great. They looked like human Slinkeys. I, on the other hand, looked like play-dough hitting the sidewalk on a very hot day. Rather than rolling, I kind of just spread out all over the mat.

So when I regained my feet, hearing the titters of my friends, I hung back in the line, hoping the teacher did not notice how many forward rolls I had accomplished before the whistle would blow for the next horror. Unfortunately, he preferred to wait until the end, leading me to believe I had pulled off my scam, making me perform my last two somersaults back-to-back, with the whole class reviewing, as if they were East German judges at the Olympics.

Honestly, as I retell this, I am not quite sure how I survived it without resorting to some sort of self-mutilation or abuse of my fellow-students.

But when I see the word acrobat, I have a mingling of great admiration and a chill that goes down my spine, remembering that torturous hour spent, for a six-week period, when my school insisted that I try to take my enormous body and  imitate a thirteen-year-old female gymnast.

Even though I could never approve and am certainly horrified when I hear about school shootings–when someone walks into his classroom and guns everybody down–honestly, I might be a little sympathetic if I found out it was a big fat kid and it was a Phys Ed class during the six weeks … of gymnastics.