It Sparkles

One of my coworkers, another S, started hooping (hula hooping to oldsters like me) two years ago, and has become very proficient. Almost obsessed. She brings her hoop to bars to dance with it while her husband's band plays. She joined a hooping group that meets in the park. She convinced J, who works in the same lab as her, to get one and before you can say Presto! Kazam!   Hooping fever was sweeping work. L started, L's husband started making and selling hoops, it was a hooping craze.

I resisted. After all, I already indulge my inner child by jumping rope for exercise, sometimes regularly, sometimes not. But J talked recently about how she feels hooping has helped her lower back, so I thought, "Hmm, I have a bad back. My sides are always in need of stretching. And I just won this NCAA pool, so why don't I splurge and buy one of the hoops S now makes."

So, ta do, here it is! My favorite colors, blue and green, with sparkly green tape wrapped first so it flashes a little.

It took about 5 minutes for me to get the hang of it again--hey, it's been probably close to 35 or 40 years since I had a hula hoop. My first attempts ended in the hoop slithering immediately off my hips onto the floor, or flinging out of control and wiping out everything on the coffee table. Darn near decapitated my cat, too. But two minutes later, I was happily hooping away. The best place to do this is probably going to be on my patio, so while I watered the roses this morning, I hooped away outside. (I'm not sure if that's the right verb used by the hot urban hoopers leading the trend, but hey, I admit to being happily middle aged and curmudgeonly and anti-trendiness.) My neighbors are used to me doing crazy things out there. Just two weeks ago I entertained them by chasing after Mr. Big with a ladle, still dressed in my pajamas, trying to get a urine sample for the doctor, at 6 o'clock in the morning. So hula hooping? Relatively normal after that.