RACHEL'S COLUMNS

These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age

Slam bam - no thank you, ma'am
15th October 2004

You know those people who hold their hands up mid sentence and use two fingers to make air quotation marks? They're so annoying. I want to handcuff them and see what happens if they're forced to struggle with old-fashioned nouns and verbs instead of mime. I should know by now that any individual who employs this method of communication is generally on the never-ending treadmill of self-improvement and determined to drag you along on their stupid ride. These people should be forced to wear T-shirts with a health warning, something like, this person will make you want to chew your own leg off.

But my instinct and better judgement, along with most of my faculties, have not been fully operational in this post-election week. Thus it was that I agreed without anyone poking me in the eye, to leave the cool and comfy surrounds of my lounge room and along with thirty other sweaty fools to jump around like a wallaby on laxatives, in an activity appropriately called "Bodyslam." Let me paint you a picture; if you were to walk down the street with a cool hip-hop swagger alternatively bashing your shoulder into approaching strangers and slamming sideways into any brick walls – and if you repeated these moves to music until your head fell off and rolled down the street – you'd have completed a Bodyslam class.

I take full responsibility for putting myself in the middle of this insanity. Why? Because I'd listened to a woman wearing fruit-print covered leggings and exposing flammable breasts. She'd lured me in by saying "Bodyslam is like Hip-Hop meets Aerobics meets (and this is where she did her cutesy air quotation marks) Cardio funk." What was I thinking? The woman, who shall remain nameless but lets call her Buffy, is one of those people who never stops talking, that's why she goes to the gym – to talk. And talk she does. She's worn out the rubber on two bikes and a cross-trainer with her power talking. We don't need the navy patrolling our coastline; just put Buffy in a boat and let her rip – she'll talk people away. And, she's cheaper than one of those inoperable submarines whose computers are smarter than the people who built them.

I'd had a momentary lapse and believed Buffy when she said that Bodyslam might be a fun alternative to jogging or going nowhere on a stationary bike. Or perhaps I agreed so she'd stop pestering me. I lasted 8 minutes; sorry I exaggerate – 5 minutes. To begin with, the instructor was a woman wrapped in so much plastic that until she moved I thought it was a Christo installation. And when she did finally move she began by clumsily trying to unscrew the top off her water bottle. "I'm such a klutz", she declared. Excuse me, but hadn't we just paid money for her co-ordination skills?

I was suddenly gripped by the harsh reality of what I'd gotten myself into when the doof-doof-boom of the music started and we were instructed by the klutz, "to get down and get funky… pretend you're at home alone and let the groove take over your body". Following directions I jumped three times to the right and slap bang into a woman who puffed and wheezed so loudly I thought I'd had a head-on with Puffing Billy. With no warning or a weather alert the bald guy with a toweling headband, who was only one grapevine step away to my left and wearing lycra bike shorts that regrettably left nothing to the imagination, started sneezing so convulsively that any moment I fully expected his testicles would snap off and roll away to be trodden on by the over-energized Buffy.

But he funked-on bravely for another minute or two until the music stopped in readiness for the next routine and suddenly in that grooveless silence all thirty of us heard the emission of air that came from the back of his bike shorts. Helpless with laughter I ran out the door while Buffy looking bewildered, kick-stepped and twirled as far away as possible from headband man. If you want a taste of Bodyslam – bite into the instructor.