I don’t often mention my clients by name, especially on my blog. I’m even more tight-lipped if they happen to be celebrities. There’s a myriad of reasons not to let people know you are surrounded by celebrities. For one, you would get hounded with requests. Things like, “Would you mind asking so-and-so if they would want to do our charity event?” The biggest problem I have is my mom would start asking for autographs from different clients. In this rare instance, I’ll mention a workout with one celebrity, Genie Francis. For those who may be too young to remember what Genie is famous for, she was and still is the most popular soap opera star ever. Her character, Laura on General Hospital, drew more attention on her television marriage to Luke than the whole “Who shot J.R.” thing from Dallas.
Remember those days when people watched television? But I digress. One of my favorite workouts with Genie is when we take a mile-long walk to the Calabasas High School track. Then Genie will walk, jog or run two miles at the track. We follow it with the same one-mile walk to her house where we do some stretching and weightlifting. Calabasas is a fairly wealthy community. The local high school is well-funded. The track is as nice as any collegiate track. The infield of the track has a beautiful artificial turf football/soccer field. Several members of the community enjoy the facility, probably more than the kids who go to the school. I told you that to tell you this. Often when Genie and I are at the track, a P.E. class will show up. Sometimes two different classes are there at the same time. I know this because there are two teachers, one male and one female. I’ve always noticed something peculiar about these teachers and the class. I never really paid attention until last Friday. As Genie and I jogged our two miles around the track, I kept an eye on the infield, where the kids were. I took note of it because the teachers were taking a leisurely walk around the track. The female teacher had a whistle on a string that she was twirling around her finger as she walked with the male teacher. Not once did either of the teachers pay attention to any of the students whatsoever. This gave me reason to see what the students were up to. I observed two groups of kids sitting in a circle. I guess you could say there were two different cliques. They were laughing and joking. The boys were flirting with the girls, and the girls were flirting back. There was some activity. Five kids were hanging around one of the soccer goals. The five were dribbling the ball and trying to pass each other to score goals. It was three boys and two girls. They weren’t really working on soccer skills. They were mostly flirting and having a good time. The whole thing enraged me. I wanted to grab the two teachers by the neck and ask them what they were getting paid to do. You hear a lot these days about art and P.E. classes getting cut out of schools because of funding. Calabasas High School is fine with funds. These people aren’t doing their jobs. I know teachers complain about not getting paid enough. But that’s bullshit. No one forced anyone to take that jobs. I grew up in a family of teachers. Yeah, they don’t get paid a lot. But they get paid after they retire until the day they die. Plus they only work about half the year, when you do the math. These two teachers couldn’t be bothered to do anything that day. I mentioned to Genie on the way back to her house, “You know, when I was a kid, we had P.E. five days a week. And we would sweat every day.” Every four to six weeks we were introduced to a new sport. I wondered out loud to my friend, “Could these kids handle five minutes of what we did on a daily basis?” She replied they probably couldn’t.
