My dad was a runner back when it was a quirky thing for adults to do. AND, furthermore, my dad was a runner when we lived in Florida and New Orleans, where the heat requires extra dedication. He also jumped rope, in an era when grown men did not jump rope unless perhaps they were making movies about getting punched in the face until they fell down, which he was not.
[not my dad]
When I was little, little like 4 or maybe even just 3, he resolved to teach me to jump rope. This was a discouraging process for Small Jamie, as someone with a deeper knowledge of gross motor development might have told him it would be, and I labored and sweated and failed to connect consecutive jumps. He used to tell the story of the time I flung the rope onto the carport floor in disgust. (Four, I must have been four. We didn't live in the carport house until I was four.) "I'll never get it!" I said amid tears. (Those of you who have been reading my perfectionist contortions for some fraction of the 17 years in which I have been posting them on the web are nodding along here, saying, "Huh, that sounds familiar.") But then I picked up that rope once more, and LO: I could do it. Mysteriously, something clicked.
That night I jumped my little heart out. I still remember waking up in my bed the next morning, too sore to move. I believed for a couple of hours that I had done some flavor of permanent damage to my body, but I bounced back pretty quickly. And from that day on, I was sold on jumping rope.
I never won anything in field day competitions, except once in fifth grade. There was a jumprope relay, and I headed up the four-person team from my classroom. Each girl jumped until she missed, and then handed off the rope to the next girl. The last team with a girl still jumping won the event. But when I started jumping I did not miss; I kept going serenely until every other girl (except my three teammates, who were standing behind me awaiting turns that never came) had stumbled and handed off her rope. I kept going until they told me to stop and collect my blue ribbon, because jumping rope was my thing.
It is no longer my thing, as I learned when I attempted a 20-minute jumprope session tonight. With a little practice I could jump a hundred times in a row tonight, but doing so sent my heartrate up into the 160s. The rope caught on my ponytail, and my feet weren't always quite where I thought they were going to be. So I would jump until I missed, and give my heart a little time to settle down, and jump until I missed again.
It was hard, from both a cardio perspective and a coordination perspective. But it was also fun and meditative. There's something joyful about jumping, about knowing where the rope will be and moving your body in time with its rhythm. I remember why I used to love it.
Let's hope I don't wake up too sore to move in the morning.
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