David took one look at the puzzles, and it was, see ya ma. Then I forgot about him for an hour. I worked on getting my heart rate up and doing my tricep curls, and oh the dreaded back exercises. I got down on the floor and did them. Jazzercise, aerobics by any other name, has been a win, win, win for me.

Win 1

I get to hang out with my friend Michelle. Well, in the summer at least. Michelle (hi Michelle!) introduced me to jazzercise. She was my carpool buddy to work, and it’s been a major loss in my life not to daily dish every minute of my day with her. So, we manage to sneak in long complicated stories as we sashay right and jazz square left.

Win 2

It’s good exercise. It’s your basic aerobics class-cardio, weights, abs. I don’t do any of that in my normal life. It actually gives me energy.

Win 3

It gives me energy because exercise does that but also because they have cheap good childcare, and I get to be off-duty for an hour. Rose loved it when she was going over the summer. David was not sure for awhile, but now he’s totally into it. I so feel like I’m cheating—letting someone else do my childcare when I quit work to do this job (can you hear my Puritan work ethic revving up?), but David is having fun. He likes throwing the ball with Nicole and drawing on the chalkboard with Pace. I’m sure it frustrated him when Cherie didn’t understand “la la” meant “I want a drink of water please,” but we’ve got that worked out. David’s happy; I’m happy.

My sociological analysis

Yeah, I like jazzercise because it’s good exercise, but it’s also joyful. It’s this total throwback to I don’t know when, a time when you could say, this is fun, and not have an edge of sarcasm in your voice. I’m so tired of cynicism, of people not letting themselves feel the spirit and get happy. Jazzercise has all sorts of dorky gimmicks—free towels for coming 30 days over the summer, hip action like a stripper, arm action like a boxer. (It’s much easier to imagine me shaking it than punching it I know.) And there we all are, white women in our 30’s to 70’s, some of us in headbands left over from the seventies, some of us in tye-dye, charging in gleefully. It’s giddy and goofy and messing up is no big deal. I’ve been to aerobics classes that were deadly serious. The women there were extremely fit, which intimidated me, the moves were complicated or boring both of which depressed me, and no one smiled. Kathy, our teacher, grins a lot. When she shimmies, she’s not making fun of herself, she’s having fun. Me too.