The Powerhouse

Wow. I have been sitting here for about 5 minutes waiting for a topic to write about. So I decided to start typing. This "daily" business is tough, people! I mean you're totally worth it as my readers, but I apologize for the writer's block.

Hmm, let's see...

Okay we're gonna talk about the first time I ever did pilates. It was my freshman year of college, and I believe it was a Friday night. It may have been the night that Samantha and I went to see a guy named Chinua Hawk sing on campus and we fell in love with him and his guitarist, Wes. Well regardless, we came back to our dorm and we were bored. I tend to be a homebody, and more than that I tend not to be a planner, so in college and still today I tend to find myself alone and bored on Friday nights, and it's really no one else's fault but mine. I can have a hoppin' social life otherwise (which, let's be honest, at this moment in time I do not, which is good and bad), but on the nights that everyone else is out, I seem to find myself in. I digress. My point is that I love it when I find someone else who is in too, whether out of personal choice or they just found themselves looking around, saying, "Wait? Is today Friday? How did I not pick out a party to attend? Hmm, I'm bored." I especially loved this in college because it was so thrilling to walk out of the bathroom, headed down the hall back to my room and to see a face of someone on their way to the bathroom who needs a playmate too. Especially when that person was my girl Sam.

Samantha and I hit it off instantly. The first time we talked was on a grassy lawn on campus in late August, in midday heat. I had just talked to a professor and she was on her way somewhere, and we stopped to say hi because we recognized each other from our wing in the dorm. Samantha always remembers that it was so hot that her butt was sweating during that conversation. The first time she revealed that to us, months later, our friend Claire said, "Who says that? I think a lot of people would think that, but only Sam would say that out loud." Well our little butt-sweaty conversation led to other, less sweaty conversations in the dorm, which became more frequent and eventually led to what we call our first "stairwell conference," later shortened to "stairwell." We were supposed to be writing our first paper for our campus' version of Western Civ, called CORE class, and the topic of the paper was responsibility. We loved that we spent three hours in the stairwell of our dorm talking, some might say irresponsibly, rather than writing our responsible papers.

After that we were extremely close. Samantha is to this day one of the funniest people I know. She also has tremendous heart, is talented, intellectual, and has a seasoned world view. We ended up studying abroad together in Namibia, which was another huge blessing in my life, to be able to study in such an amazing place with Sam (as well as with our friend Dan, an equally amazing person).

Well with this you can imagine that doing pilates together was one of our many adventures our freshman year. I'm not sure why we decided to do pilates that Friday night in January, other than we were in college and what conversation in college doesn't lead from conversation to action? Example: "I love chocolate ice cream..." "Let's drive 3 hours and get some RIGHT now!" (Come to think of it that ice cream example was completely random, but I did drive almost 2 hours once in college with my friends Jason and Laura to buy a package of gum, just for the heck of it). Well we went to Sam's room, popped in the VHS Winsor Pilates tape, and proceeded to let an hour pass. Since Sam was something of an expert on this tape, she mostly instructed and watched me do the exercises. We laughed when I couldn't do them, made fun of the one-piece stretch outfits worn by the people in the video. Sometimes we both just watched the video without participating ourselves. I wouldn't be surprised if we popped popcorn. As the tape was first starting and Mari Winsor, the host and creator of this line of pilates, came on the screen, Samantha introduced me: "This is Mari," she said. So matter of fact. Her voice and those words will pop into my head at the most random of times and I will always smile wherever I am. "This is Mari."

While I mostly laughed at my inability and Samantha's hilarity when first introduced to the activity, I actually came to love pilates. Claire and I would borrow Sam's video all the time and exercise in our dorm's "work out room," aka a huge room with three huge couches (meant for breaks, I guess, or stretching?), a kitchen (for pre- and post-work out snacks), and one elliptical running machine. We would do such exercises and stretches as "rolling like a ball," "the hundred," and "the seal." I always felt so tall and stretched afterward, moreso than I ever have after yoga, another thing I love. So note to self, you should really consider trying pilates a few times, you might love it.

I'm quite certain I haven't done a pilates workout since my junior year. Come to think of it, it was me, Claire, and Sam the last time I did. Sam walked across campus with the video and when she got there we asked why she brought the 20 minute workout instead of the 40, to which she responded something along the lines of, "Are you kidding? I wouldn't be able to do the 40 minute! I'm way too out of shape!" To which we of course laughed. So it's been almost four years. Sad. Perhaps I should get reacquainted with Mari. And maybe call Sam before I start so she can reintroduce us. "Bailey, this is Mari. Mari, Bailey."