When I Was A Kid.........(conversations)
"When I was kid, I walked 5 miles to school, and back again, couldn’t afford bus fare....Well, we were so poor I had to walk without a jacket...We were so poor my brothers and sisters had to share the shoes...At least you had shoes, we had to walk in our bare feet...Well, at least you had feet........"

Sometimes the recollections of childhood miseries can become a bit embellished. Under serious evaluation however, it does seem that our older folks, as well as past generations, were more active than contemporary young people are.

My father was born on a farm located on the Vermont/New York border; my mother was a city dweller, raised in the tri-city area of New York’s Albany capital district. Even then, during the initial years of the 1900s, these two worlds were far removed from one another. Even so, neither was ever short on activities or chores. My mother walked to and from school, lugged groceries to their 3rd story apartment, and with her brother, wheeled ice in a wagon from the icehouse to the icebox. (Some people may forget that there was a time when refrigerators did not exist.) Cleaning day included the wash done by hand and put through a “ringer” (more work than it is worth if you have ever used one). Rugs were removed, carried outside and ‘batted’ clean. Luckily, coal tending was not her job. While my father took a local wagon to school, he had to walk several miles to catch it (when he did not stay home to work). Animals and chickens were tended to daily, often more than once a day; wood was chopped and stacked year round for their long winters. Soil preparation, planting, and harvesting were cyclic. The repair of fences, outbuildings and other farm equipment were endless. Of course they both found some time for play -- meaning physical activities.

Walk, run, pull, haul, carry, lift, scrub, saw, chop, stack, dig, wash, weed, mow and play. Their physical activity was constant.

It is not surprising that those of older generations would believe “exercise is bunk:” a newfangled fad that is not worth the hype. While life styles change from every generation to the next, the transformations during this century have been unique. Technology has created a true metamorphosis to torpid living -- and of course, limited daily activity. Even if everyone over 50 years old did not walk 5 miles to school every day, they did (as a group) lead highly active lives.

Whereas a plethora of public information and media spots encourage people toward activity, the people rebel (not in spirit, only in flesh). Exercisers are quite visible on the streets and in the gyms. But not enough of the world’s population is engaged in such behaviors, especially in industrialized nations where general daily activity is already sluggish. Some grannies might have new Adidas, but most are still sitting under their shawls. Overall too few people are paying attention to the need for activity.

The Terrible Twelves
In the spring of 1996, a joint statement from the CDCP (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) was disturbing. It estimated that 12% of the total deaths per year (as many as 250,000) in the United States are “attributable to physical inactivity.”

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