OH, WOW! Today was just crazy—and I mean CRAZY! I was sound asleep in my bed this morning, peacefully dreaming about a double cheeseburger with fries and a milk shake from my favorite restaurant, the Classic Malt Shoppe.
So there I was, enjoying this lovely dream. The food had been delivered and was sitting in front of me, and I was just about to take my first bite of that delicious double cheeseburger when—CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! A shocking noise scared me half to death. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. I thought I was being attacked by aliens from outer space who used broken, old drum cymbals as their main weapon!
Then I heard the voice of one of the alien monsters yelling at me, “GET OUT OF BED!” I immediately thought that this alien sounded an awful lot like Uncle Jake. Yep, you guessed it—that was because it WAS Uncle Jake. He had a broomstick and a metal garbage can, and he was banging them together and yelling at me to get out of bed and give him fifty push-ups. Still confused and thinking about the double cheeseburger I was about to dig into in my dream, I told the alien that I didn’t think I could do five push-ups, so fifty was out of the question.
But Uncle Jake didn’t care at all about my cheeseburger or how many push-ups I could do. He put the garbage can next to my head and banged EVEN LOUDER! I rolled out of bed and did nine push-ups before I fell flat on my face.
When I finally looked around, I realized that it was STILL DARK OUTSIDE! I asked Uncle Jake what time it was, and he said it was time to get up and get busy!!!
That is how my day started. From there Uncle Jake showed me a bunch of exercises—and then made me do them. The weird thing was that all these exercises had strange names that seemed to put a big smile on Uncle Jake’s face. “Star jumpers.” “Burpees.” “Diamond push-ups.” “Dive-bomber push-ups.” “Supermans.” “Jackknives.” “Belly busters.” And let me tell you, even though these names sound funny, THERE WAS NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT THEM AT ALL. They hurt! But Uncle Jake seemed to do them all so easily. Then Uncle Jake gave me a test. I had to do as many squats, push-ups, and sit-ups as I could in two minutes with one minute of rest in between. I did twenty-three squats, fourteen push-ups, and eighteen sit-ups. Then Uncle Jake did the same thing. He did 104 squats, 108 push-ups, and 122 sit-ups!!!!!
I told Uncle Jake I was a WEAKLING! Then he explained to me that I was only weak right now because I had never trained before—never worked out. “In order to make your body strong,” he said, “you have to make it work.” Then he told me that it all started by getting up early in the morning and “GETTING AFTER IT.” I asked if maybe, instead of waking up so early we could just do our workout a little later in the day, perhaps at a more REASONABLE time.
Uncle Jake said NO WAY. He said that pushing yourself began every day with PULLING YOURSELF OUT OF BED!
I asked him if that meant I had to have a GARBAGE CAN BANGED IN MY EARS every day.
He said no—as long as I was up and out of bed early enough (!!!!!!), there would be no garbage can!
So it was either get out of bed early or have a garbage can banged in my ears!!
I wasn’t so sure I liked this program! But I did have to say one thing that surprised me. Doing all those exercises in the morning actually made me feel better all day. I felt awake and good and like I had extra energy. So even though the early wake up and the exercising was kind of rough, I really liked the way it made me feel for the rest of the day. It was worth it!