Oboes. Ships. Turnarounds. Jeans.

Working out is good for me on many levels. Some of my most surprising memories and ideas come to me while I'm in that adrenalinized state.

I taught myself to play a lot of instruments in high school; music is the easiest and most natural thing in the world to me. An instrument that enchanted me but I never got to learn was the oboe. I remember asking my band director one day if I could learn that - we'd never had one but I always saw him giving the oboe score to a flutist because it was an important part. All he had to say about the matter was that it would be too hard.

So I learned that if I imagined or wanted something, and it seemed difficult, to not bother trying.

First grade: I remember a day that we were asked to draw, with colored pencils, Columbus' three ships. I don't remember which one I drew, but I remember handing it to my teacher and receiving her angry response, "You can do MUCH better than that!" (Artistry runs in my family, though this I most certainly did not inherit. Should a 6-year-old to be chastised for that?)

So I learned that whatever I have to create or contribute is not valuable or good enough.

Tyler was a most-naughty boy at our first grade table of four. Our punishment system in 1983 was the "turnaround." If you were bad - or if the teacher was out-of-sorts and one of your tablemates was bad - you had to go flip your little bookmark-tag around in its pocket and you lost a privilege. Tyler was at his finest that day, and she made each of us go up to the board individually and turn our card around in front of the whole class. I remember being so angry, having not done anything wrong. (I think I had scolded him myself, without success.)

So I learned that even when it's not my fault, I must take responsibility, and I should just be quiet about it.

I sat outside the dressing room yesterday while my sister tried on jeans at Macy's. I gave a derisive laugh when she asked if I'd seen anything to try on. I told her I don't belong here (in the junior section, where the cute clothes are). She said, "Come on, what outfit do you have that when you put it on, you know you look hot?"  Say whaaaa?

I never learned to feel that way - "hot." Or attractive in any sense of the word. I think that's why I'm not a fun person to shop with - I'm crabby and easily antagonized. I struggle to visit a makeup counter for goodness' sake - anything on my face is negated from the neck down. I know that nothing will fit. If by miracle it does, it surely won't look good. Because I don't look good. Why else would I have had to sit out marching band in high school because there was only one uniform big enough for me - and it had to go to a boy? Why else would I have to have a specially made cheerleading skirt, because the largest was a size 9? And I wish those were the saddest stories, but they're far from it.

I learned that even if I had the talent, smarts, or even a pretty face, my body still made me wrong.

This is what I think about as I push through my workout: a punishment, if you will, that I must put myself through for the enjoyment of a meal. And I wonder why I can't seem to write the two remaining Italia blogs - one on beauty, one on the eating experience?