I spent 3 days trying to figure out why my forearms, elbows, and right bicep hurt so bad, until it came to me: the cartwheel. It all started when my son posted a picture on Instagram of his wife doing a handstand on one of the piers in Marquette. My husband decided that he wanted to recreate the picture when we traveled there this past weekend, only he’d be the one doing the handstand on the pier. “I don’t even know if I can do a handstand,” he wondered. “This could get real bad, real fast, “ I thought in response. When we got to the pier and discovered how narrow it was, we began to have serious second thoughts. “Do you realize that if you make one wrong move, you’ll end up falling 15 feet into those rocks down there?” Tom said to me. I really didn’t want to see either one of us over-throw our legs while trying to kick up into a handstand on a 3 foot wide pier. I mean, how in the world would the ambulance get out there? Let’s be smart here, people. “Maybe I can do a cartwheel and you can just take a picture of that,” I suggested.
There are a couple things I need to admit here. I am 52 years old. I haven’t done a cartwheel since 1993. I have never done a cartwheel on a 3 foot wide cement pier.
But that shouldn’t matter should it? I mean, c’mon. It’s a cartwheel. Historically, cartwheels are one of those things that seem to come naturally to girls. Just like riding a bike…isn’t it? What could possibly go wrong? So I took a look at the pier, stretched my arms in the air, and froze. Momentarily. Then I just went for it. My body did nothing that it was supposed to. Apparently my muscle memory had expired. All of those thousands and thousands of cartwheels, one-handed cartwheels, and ariel cartwheels? Gone. Remember watching the boys in middle school gym class attempt cartwheels? That’s what it felt like and according to the 17 pictures Tom took as this ridiculous demonstration took place, is exactly what it looked like. After I deleted all of those pictures, I decided that either I should never attempt a cartwheel again, or I really need to work on my cartwheel executions. Which brings me back to the arm pain 3 days later. Apparently, these arms can no longer hold up my body, even briefly. And remember how I said that it was Tom’s idea to recreate the handstand picture to begin with? Those of you who know him, know he’s not a handstand kind of guy. But thanks to modern camera-phone technology I am happy to report that we successfully staged Tom doing what looked something like a handstand, snapped a picture, and sent it off to the kids. Nobody fell off the pier. And only one of us has the arm pain to show for it.
