Humor

Public Decorum: A Thing of the Past?

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(Originally published in Main Line Life 3/5/08)

Warning: If you experience any of the following symptoms while reading this column, please either call your physician, listen to the Beatles White Album backwards, or fold this newspaper in fourths and whack yourself in the face. Symptoms may include shortness of breath, uncontrollable laughter, blurred vision, bloating, blind rage, boredom, constipation lasting more than four days.
I hope you aren’t eating breakfast, or lunch for that matter. Because the topic I am about to discuss is not a pleasant one – in fact, it is just plain gross. Nevertheless it is a subject that needs to be addressed. Somewhere along the way, decorum in our society has been eroded away, and now we are continually bombarded with nauseating images and icky people on television and in real life as well.
I use the word “decorum” with some trepidation. I do not consider myself to be all that prudish, but it seems to me that certain topics that were once considered unmentionable are now being discussed openly and freely with no thought to propriety. At the same time, a sense of decency in how some people dress in public also seems to have gone by the wayside.

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Still Exercising After All These Years

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 3/1/2006.  Don’t let this happen to you…)

This is the time of year when health clubs, packed with people with good intentions in January, start to see dwindling attendance. I’ve noticed it every year no matter where I am working out. All those resolutions, made so optimistically after the holiday eat-a-thon, start to fade into the clamor of “other stuff that needs to be done first.” Before you know it, your yoga mat is crammed in the back of the hall closet along with your Tae Bo video and your running shoes.

I’m here to say, don’t let it happen to you. Maybe you didn’t turn into a size six after working out for two months, but if you can get through the winter blahs, just think how much better you will look and feel when you have to get in that bathing suit at spring break.

An acquaintance asked me the other day how I stay in shape, even though I passed the AARP qualifying age a few years back. I replied that I have been working out now for thirty years – if I didn’t look halfway decent by now I would have to deaden the pain by consuming large quantities of Godiva. This person was stunned and dubious that someone could really stay with an exercise program for thirty years, but it’s true. There are some of us “boomers” who jumped on the Jane Fonda and Jim Fixx bandwagon (now that is reaching back) and never got off.

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