Crazy Little Thing

Twice a week for the past few months I’ve been leading a walking workout up on the track at the facility where I work. The walking workout is for our seniors, and my goal is to get them to walk for 30 minutes. We do it on Mondays and Thursdays. I’ve got a small but dedicated group that attend.

Here’s how it works: I make a playlist and assign exercises to go with the different songs. We do grapevine, or side-steps, or bicep curls with weights while walking, etc. We even walk backwards, which is great for balance!

On Thursday of this week, I decided to look for love songs with an upbeat tempo for my playlist. The warm-up song was “Walking on Sunshine.” Afterwards, one of the ladies told me that was one of her favorites. “It’s the song I used to use as the first song when I would go running,” she said.

She doesn’t run anymore, but she be-bopped around the track and sang along as she did. It made me smile.

Now, as I explained, I have the walkers do different things while walking. I’ve tried having them do lunges (only four at a time!) which isn’t popular. I had them balance something on their head while walking. (I thought it might help with posture.) I thought about having them walk backwards and toss a football to a forward-walking walker who then would have to walk backwards — but it seemed complicated and I wasn’t sure if the idea was workable.

For the second song on Thursday, though, I tried out a new cock-a-mamie ideas.

The song was The Proclaimers’ song “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” (see below). I wanted them to try walking at the same pace as someone else. I explained that when I was taking care of my father, one of the hardest things for me to do was to walk at his pace. I also explained that it was a drill I used to use occasionally when I coached swimming where I had the swimmers try to swim in synchrony with another swimmer. I’m not sure that it made them faster, but it did make them aware that they were not the only person in the world, which is a better life skill than being a fast swimmer.

Anyway, I explained this to my walkers and then I watched them as they tried to walk in step with someone else. The more I watched, the more I thought about my father and how hard it was to walk with him through those last years but how he had set the example by walking with my mother through her last years.

I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything.

The next song that came up was Queen singing “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” We did the grapevine to it.

In my head I was still back at how walking with another person at their pace is an act of love. I would walk 500 miles like that. Crazy little thing called love.

This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday prompt: Love..