My physical therapist wanted me to log into an app for my exercises. Big brother has been reimagined.
This morning, I watched the app do my exercises.
"Get ready," said a disembodied voice with an English accent.
Why an English accent? Why not a guy with a French accent?
"Begin," she said and a video of a minion woman lying on a massage table ran in what seemed like extra-slow motion. I watched her stretch for a few minutes.
I just might be willing to lie down to stretch for a guy with a French accent.
I watched the minion stretch. Was she even moving? It was like watching grass grow.
"Take a rest," she said.
Thank you. I could use a rest. I went to bed late last night because Nick was sick and I stayed up and watched him cough and be nauseated. Then, when he trundled down the steps at 5:00 this morning, I woke up after four and a half hours of sleep, not enough to be cheerful to the new voice in my life with the English accent.
"Begin," she said again.
"Fuck off," I replied. Nick looked up and then returned to his show. He understood the generic attitude toward the new world order at only 6:27 in the morning.
Then, while she directed her minion to stretch her lower trunk in Matrix-style slow motion, I let the dog out and stood at the screen to take a deep breath of morning air. I wondered if the hummingbirds finished drinking their sugar and were ready for a refill. A shot of sugar water sounded good about then. I'd already made Nick an omelet, cleaned the litter box, and taken out the garbage.
"Take a rest," she said as if I didn't really deserve one.
This woman was a nag, a fucking nag. And if I imagined correctly, she spoke using resting bitch face. How is it that I could picture a woman's face when I couldn't even see her and I was only listening to her voice?
Because I could.
Still, that one hamstring stretch, the one where I was supposed to straighten my leg and lean toward a flexed foot, that one looked like it would be a relief.
So, I did that stretch, but just on one side, and not in the perfect pose that my slow-motion minion model showed me. I never looked like the pictures that they showed in exercise programs.
Did you ever look between your elbows when you were doing one of those planks they showed on Pinterest? They really should show those things in an accurate way, from my perspective, with my clothes dragging the floor, my belly wobbling, and my calves quivering. Don't forget the beads of sweat that popped out and dripped down my face in a strange path. I was used to tears taking a certain route down my face. And if I were planking for an audience, the physical therapist would most certainly hover over me telling me to breathe when there was only a half a pint of air left in my squinched up lungs while I held my abs, under the wobbly belly, as tight as a drum.
Yeah, under all the loose folds of skin, I'm ripped, completely ripped. So are you, right?
I really hoped that the camera wasn't enabled during my use of this app. If the physical therapist could only see my selfie camera at work, she'd have seen me at the bottom of the screen, tap-tap-tapping away at my computer.
"Good job," my Brit woman exclaimed in a bored voice.
Why couldn't she sound like she meant it? Why did she have to talk in that tone of voice that said that even if I did lie down on the floor with all the dog hair I should have vacuumed yesterday, it would never have been good enough for her because of the way I really looked in my baggy clothes and my baggy skin? And she was going to make sure my physical therapist knew it. She must be related to the naggy-voiced computer woman at the grocery store who told me how to use the self-checkout lane when I was just a bit too slow at scanning that next item.
The bitches.
Thank you for listening, jb
This morning, I watched the app do my exercises.
"Get ready," said a disembodied voice with an English accent.
Why an English accent? Why not a guy with a French accent?
"Begin," she said and a video of a minion woman lying on a massage table ran in what seemed like extra-slow motion. I watched her stretch for a few minutes.
I just might be willing to lie down to stretch for a guy with a French accent.
I watched the minion stretch. Was she even moving? It was like watching grass grow.
"Take a rest," she said.
Thank you. I could use a rest. I went to bed late last night because Nick was sick and I stayed up and watched him cough and be nauseated. Then, when he trundled down the steps at 5:00 this morning, I woke up after four and a half hours of sleep, not enough to be cheerful to the new voice in my life with the English accent.
"Begin," she said again.
"Fuck off," I replied. Nick looked up and then returned to his show. He understood the generic attitude toward the new world order at only 6:27 in the morning.
Then, while she directed her minion to stretch her lower trunk in Matrix-style slow motion, I let the dog out and stood at the screen to take a deep breath of morning air. I wondered if the hummingbirds finished drinking their sugar and were ready for a refill. A shot of sugar water sounded good about then. I'd already made Nick an omelet, cleaned the litter box, and taken out the garbage.
"Take a rest," she said as if I didn't really deserve one.
This woman was a nag, a fucking nag. And if I imagined correctly, she spoke using resting bitch face. How is it that I could picture a woman's face when I couldn't even see her and I was only listening to her voice?
Because I could.
Still, that one hamstring stretch, the one where I was supposed to straighten my leg and lean toward a flexed foot, that one looked like it would be a relief.
So, I did that stretch, but just on one side, and not in the perfect pose that my slow-motion minion model showed me. I never looked like the pictures that they showed in exercise programs.
Did you ever look between your elbows when you were doing one of those planks they showed on Pinterest? They really should show those things in an accurate way, from my perspective, with my clothes dragging the floor, my belly wobbling, and my calves quivering. Don't forget the beads of sweat that popped out and dripped down my face in a strange path. I was used to tears taking a certain route down my face. And if I were planking for an audience, the physical therapist would most certainly hover over me telling me to breathe when there was only a half a pint of air left in my squinched up lungs while I held my abs, under the wobbly belly, as tight as a drum.
Yeah, under all the loose folds of skin, I'm ripped, completely ripped. So are you, right?
I really hoped that the camera wasn't enabled during my use of this app. If the physical therapist could only see my selfie camera at work, she'd have seen me at the bottom of the screen, tap-tap-tapping away at my computer.
"Good job," my Brit woman exclaimed in a bored voice.
Why couldn't she sound like she meant it? Why did she have to talk in that tone of voice that said that even if I did lie down on the floor with all the dog hair I should have vacuumed yesterday, it would never have been good enough for her because of the way I really looked in my baggy clothes and my baggy skin? And she was going to make sure my physical therapist knew it. She must be related to the naggy-voiced computer woman at the grocery store who told me how to use the self-checkout lane when I was just a bit too slow at scanning that next item.
The bitches.
Thank you for listening, jb
No comments:
Post a Comment