The next morning I got up right away instead of lying around. I dressed, brushed my teeth, and cleaned up a little. When I got downstairs my parents were sitting down to breakfast. “You’re up early,” my father said, surprised. I shrugged.
My mother wanted to make me eggs, but I was in a hurry. I mixed up some of that instant oatmeal that tastes okay so long as you don’t have it too often. My parents sat sipping their coffee as I ate.
“How was the game?” my father asked.
“Good,” I said, shoveling in the oatmeal. “We trounced them.”
“And Josh?”
“He was great.”
“Glad to hear it.”
I finished the oatmeal, took my bowl to the sink, washed it up.
“Have you got any plans for today?” my mom asked.
“I thought I might lift some weights,” I said, “stretch out, maybe find the rowing machine and work out on it. That sort of stuff.”
My dad’s eyes lit up. “Good for you,” he said. “Good for you. I’m not sure where the rowing machine is anymore. But I know the weights are down in the basement.”
So that’s where I went, even though I hate it down there. The walls aren’t finished off like in most basements, and we’ve had rats more than once. It smells damp and earthy, and if you’re standing by the furnace when the gas ignites, you feel as though a ball of fire is coming your way.
The weights and the weight bench were tucked away in a back corner. I took a rag and wiped away about a million spider webs, then I cleared a space in the middle of the basement for the bench.
Like most guys, I’d lifted off and on—mostly off—since I was twelve. And like most guys, bench pressing was all I’d ever cared about. I’d about break my back trying to heave some load of iron up, the whole time fantasizing about huge biceps, rippling back muscles, and adoring girls.
But that morning I lifted the right way. Squats, curls, reverse curls, bench presses—all of them with medium weight and lots of repetitions.
I lifted for about forty-five minutes. My muscles were so fatigued my hands twitched and my legs felt as though they had turned to Jell-O. Back upstairs I drank about a gallon of water, then went to my bedroom and got to work stretching.
I sat on the floor and pointed my toes toward the opposite wall. My left ankle curved easily, but the toes on my right foot were still pointed toward the ceiling. I could barely get that ankle to bend, and it hurt like crazy. Still, I held the stretch for a twenty count. Next I pointed my toes toward my face and held that for twenty. Toward the wall; toward my face. Over and over. Once the ankle had finally loosened a little, I rotated my feet—first clockwise, then counterclockwise—through the whole range of motion. When I was done with my ankles, I worked on my legs, my arms, my back—doing the stretches right, the way Josh did them in the summer.
After lunch my dad helped me get the rowing machine down from the loft in the shed. It wasn’t so much heavy as awkward. An arm smacked me in the head twice.
I wouldn’t have known where to oil it or what kind of oil to use, but he did. “You can keep this in your room,” he said when he was satisfied he had it working as well as it could work. “Just shove it under the bed when you’re not using it.”
I thought rowing would be easy—or at least easier than lifting weights or stretching. I set the resistance pretty high, put the timer on for thirty minutes, and started. What a shock that was! After five minutes or so I was gasping for air. I had to stop and make the resistance easier, and at the twelve-minute mark I had to stop and make it easier still. I was laboring, but I made the full thirty minutes.
You always hear that being selfish is about the worst thing, that you should think of other people. That day I had thought about nobody but myself. And at the end of it I felt good, really good—better than I’d felt in a long, long time.