Finally

The elusive deltoid.

My first recollection of any kind of body awareness beyond the ow, that hurt of scraped knees was during the 1976 Summer Olympics. I was almost nine years old and hadn't seen gymnastics before--our tiny southern Illinois town must have failed to notice the '72 Games--so I was fascinated by the people flinging themselves through the air and whipping their bodies around bars and rings and pommel horses. Tellingly, I suppose, I didn't think much of the female gymnasts; even though they were actual physically mature women back in those ancient days rather than the perpetually pre-pubescent pixies we have now, the leotards and makeup must have put me off. Yes, I know the women were incredibly fit, limber, and strong, but they still looked like the kind of prim lady my grandmothers had been stubbornly trying to mold me into since I started to walk and discovered I liked jeans and train engineer caps much more than lacy dresses and patent leather Mary Janes.

The strength and power exhibited by the guy gymnasts, though, just fascinated me without any guilt-embossed baggage. Specifically, I was completely taken with their deltoids, especially when they were on the rings, hanging there motionless in that T position. Hey, I played on the rings at the playground all the time and knew how hard that was, even as a 60-pound wisp of a kid. They made it look easy. Right then I decided I must someday get a set of deltoids myself. Which proved to be not easy at all with body fat that actually registers in the double digits. Hmm. So I put it aside for decades.

This morning at the gym, thirty years later, I glanced in the mirror as I toiled away on the elliptical machine, and there the deltoids were, perched on the sides of my shoulders and playing it cool like they had always been there. Six months of concerted effort in the weight room has finally paid off. They'll certainly evaporate in a poof of mesquite pollen the next time I sneeze, but today I am basking in the knowledge that I managed to achieve at least one of my completely meaningless childhood dreams.