Gatoring

The Mighty Mab is training for the Big Virtual Climb, so we've been working out together, which probably sounds funny because I'm quadriplegic. But actually she works out, and I "gator." What's gatoring? Here's what I wrote about it a while ago:

A friend wrote me about an article I published.  Reading it, she was all pumped about getting back to the gym.  You bet I was flattered, and happy she was taking care of herself.  I may have thrown on some sweats and worked up a little sympathy lather myself.

A few months later, I heard from her again.  What was I thinking, she said, I'm no gym-rat.  I really tried, she said, really I did.  Maybe she'd get back to some sort of exercise, the letter continued, but thanks, at least your words were nice.

I was a little bit bummed, a little bit let down.  But also relieved: how could I tell her I'm lucky when I can get myself to exercise!  (Wicked columnist.)

I'll never set work-out records.  Even though it's good for me, even though I feel great afterward.  It's just that physical exertion, like doing the taxes or visiting the dentist, is infinitely easy to put off.  For most of us, any old excuse will do. 

But I wonder if it's how you frame it. Like, you don't have to start working out. We don't have to begin exercising every day.  We don't have to get cut and sexy like the moody underwear models are.  All we have to do is move, today, right now.  We can just have a good time.  We can even gator.

When I was a kid, we gatored.  Walking along, without warning we would drop to our backs and begin shaking and convulsing.  Sort of like the players that toppled over in the very old electric football games, remember those?  Those games with the little sponge footballs, where the entire football field vibrates?  Those fallen players you watched spasming in front of you?  They were gatoring, like I used to do. 

Remember David Byrne in the Once in a Lifetime video, cuffing himself in the forehead?  Early mass-market gatoring.

Gatoring was funny, it was unpredictable, it was fun, it was necessary.  The weirder the place, the better.  Best of all, there were no rules, you couldn't do anything wrong.  You just gatored. 

At a stoplight, sometimes it were a time fer a-gatorin'. On the sidewalk, on the lawn, on the hood of my buddy's Camaro (LIE: He would have killed me).

Wearing our black tails, we gatored at the senior prom.  God, the people there hated me.  They stopped on the dance floor and scowled, like "you freaks are ruining our prom memories." But we were making perfect memories for us.

I didn't learn gatoring technique from a book, or rent a gatoring exercise video.  I just did it, because it came naturally.

Now it's 20 years on, and we don't gator anymore.  We're too stiff and serious to gator.  That is part of the problem with maturing, you freeze up.  You become inflexible, you calcify, upstairs and down.  You get fat.  Forgetful, too.  Everything scheduled.

But I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows, called "Brain Brew."  It's about exchanging ideas between entrepreneurs, inventors and other creative types.  One of their weekly segments is called The Thirty-Second Guru, where a guest describes his philosophy in 30 ticks of the clock.  The guru who caught my attention was a Scottish fitness consultant (I can't make this stuff up, people) who spoke like he had a caffeine habit--he made Billy Connolly sound like Lurch from "The Addams Family."  But what really got my attention was that he was talking about gatoring!  Not the word gatoring (he couldn't possibly be that cool), but the concept. 

He said, Right now, start flailing.  Do it for 10 minutes, no rules, just go ballistic, kinetic.  Dive on that couch.  Flap around.  Do your best Mick Jagger, or at least Joe Cocker.  Shake your tail feather.  Windmill your arms.  Hop up and down.  Tumble.  Scream.  Squirm.  Twirl.  Spin your head, Linda Blair.  Shimmy, shake, rattle and roll.  If your spouse might yell or make derogatory comments, or you'll be embarrassed, then wait until they leave: screw 'em, they're missing out!  Do it until you are laughing, then rinse and repeat.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is gatoring.

People don't exercise because it requires this huge amount of effort every day, getting ready, getting the motivation and energy to do so, taking the shower afterward.  Myself included.  We don't need to do all that.  We just need to be active.  We just need to gator.  It is so good for you, prolonging your life and making it better, keeping the sex drive going strong, all kinds of rocking things we don't even know.  Did I say yet that it's funny?

My friend would sometimes find someone to watch the kid for 20 minutes.  Then she would pay for a carwash.  While the car was going through, she would scream her fool head off, and gator like there was no tomorrow!  She can scream, too!  If it was especially good, she might go across the street to Dunkin' Donuts for a coffee and cigarette.

That's it!  And guess what?  Gatoring is part of the new food pyramid they released this week--it's true!  So, gator, baby!  Gator for your life!

Go Mab!