“I hate going to the gym in January,” Cheezy announced.
“It must be really crowded,” I surmised,“because of the cold weather outside in Utah.”
“No,” he answered, “because of New Year’s resolutions.”
Cheezy prepped me for my New Year resolution. He acted as my workout coach while he was down visiting for the holidays. We were able to sneak in several sessions. As I lay on my mat, panting, almost dead from exhaustion, I wondered if he was merely getting even with me for making trying to make him do chores when he was younger. He demonstrated the exercises, and was patient was me. He helped when my form was less than perfect, though I admit he did laugh. It was that same laugh my grandma had when she tried to teach me to crochet. I am so scarred for life I’ll never be able to crochet baby booties.
“Can we write down the exercises I did so I can do them when you’re not here?” I asked. “I won’t remember them otherwise.” Although I suspected my abs and biceps would remember them longer.
“Sure,” he said.
“Okay,” I answered, dragging in a long piece of empty paper.
“Front delt raise,” he said.
“What the heck is that?” I asked.
“Deltoid,” he explained. Like that explanation helped. I still looked stumped. Finally he got up and demonstrated. I drew a picture in stick men.
“We’ll never get done this way,” he said. I was drawing stick figures as fast as I could. “You’ll never be able to do the exercises correctly from these pictures.” Was it because my arms don’t actually grow out of my head? My graphics were pretty pathetic looking. He was right about that. (Except for the really straight back, pretty awesome.) “You could get hurt if you do them wrong.” Did he mean poking myself in the eye with a barbell as the figure suggests?
“I wish I could talk terms with you,” he said. “This will take forever.” Not to mention the amount of paper. But I knew exactly how he felt. There were many times when I wished I could have talked “terms” with him, and he just got it. 
Turnabout’s fair play.
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Great post! I started going to the gym with my daughter years ago, and she taught me all about using weights. (She had taken weight-training in college.) Today I still flinch when I see people at the gym swinging their weights instead of lifting them, or jerking on the machines instead of using smooth, controlled movements. All I need to do is get myself to the gym more often!
I liked your stick figure.
You draw waybetter than I do!
Your artistic abilities are even better than your photographic skills! Awesome post!