November 09, 2011

thanksgiving memories

A few years ago I was in a weights class with an old Russian for a coach who we called Wally.  I'll never forget him, he was one of those people that just made you happy about life.   He liked to act tough and mean, he would yell at us while we were doing circuits ("faster, FASTER! I can't hear you scream!") but he was really just an old sweet heart who was full of good advice on healthy living.  He was convinced that listening to the "Rocky" sound track could make you lift more (obviously true) and so every class period he made us listen to it. One day he brought a cereal box to class with some scripture from the Bible as the name of the cereal and he said very seriously that "we should eat this cereal in the mornings, not the tootie fruity cereals, if we want to have energy and live forever."  My favorite memory of him was the day before Thanksgiving break, he gave us homework for the break, he told us in his thick Russian accent that "On Thanksgiving morning, you wake up, your Mom's in the kitchen and you smell the turkey and the pumpkin pies but you don't go to the kitchen... no... you go outside and you RUN THREE MILES!"  


So that's what I did, and that's what I've tried to do every Thanksgiving since because who am I to question Wally? He definitely knows what's best.

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