Sunday, March 25, 2007

The Ball - It's Killing Me!


This is the ball. My ball is JUST like this one, but the one in the picture is a professional model - my ball works for a living. He/She/It has a mission and that mission is to tear down every fat cell in my body and to make me the animal I was meant to be - Ha!
When I was a kid I had a hoppity hop. It was red with a little handle on the top of it - did you have one? No, probably not, you're not as old as I am - but the fact remains that everything comes full circle - circle - that's funny...maybe things come full sphere! (Just a little geometric humor, please forgive me.) I'm still bouncing on rubber balls and I'm still falling off of them, and I'm still thinking that the simpliest of ideas sometimes work the best. I actually improved my horseback riding skills by riding my hoppity hop. (I should capitalize Hoppity Hop, it is a proper noun and I am a professor of English - there, I did it.)
By holding the ball firmly between my thighs and simulating the motion that one would use to ride a horse, I found that not only the balance one has to force, but the sheer strength it takes to grab that rubber, spherical monster is tougher than one thinks. You know that feeling you get when you stop rolling skating - you're still rolling; well, when you stop pounding the carpet with the ball - you're still somehow atop of old Silver riding WAY off into the sunset - for better or worse. 25 minutes of hard riding can cause a girl to start seeing cowboys in their dirty, rough,tight Wrangler jeans just over the horizon - maybe shaking off the dust from their weather beaten Stetsons.....or maybe it's George Milton, coming out from behind a barley bucker....ride girl, ride!

1 comment:

Shana said...

I did, indeed, have a Hippity Hop. And loved it. And whenever I'm on MY ball (mine's a rather standard blue, not space-age silver!), I think how much fun it would be if it came with a detchable handle, just in case I wanted to ride it down Broadway! :o)