Mrs. Beaumont, My Inspiration

Posted on by

I was a math whiz in high school.  Mrs. Beaumont was our high school math teacher and she is my inspiration.  I can still see her nicotine stained fingers busily writing algebraic equations across the blackboard, chalk in hand.  I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the formulas.  I have the Sloas math gene.  The solutions and the logic were as clear to me as a  hidden picture in a Highlights magazine.  It was almost like cheating.  But I was mesmerized.  Those arms. Those wobbly, saggy, undulating arms.  I can still see them.

We were active kids from the get go. We would go outside to play after breakfast, stop for lunch at whose ever house we happened to be near and come home at the sound of the dinner bell.  Pearline would ring this big ole cow bell and shout “Shahhhh  nahhhhh, Mahhh leeeee ahhhhh” (thats how she said Melisse). We climbed trees, made forts, played tag, jumped rope, rode bikes.  Then we started swimming on a competitive team and we did that five or six times a week.  I wasn’t all that good, but I was right there in the thick of it.

 
We discovered horses and dropped swimming like a hot potato. We lived at the barn seven days a week.  I rode a horse every day of my life until I was 16. We rode hunter jumpers and even went on the occasional fox hunt. We traveled all over the south going to shows. It was fun. 
 
All throughout our childhood we water skied at our beloved Pickwick Lake. It might have been the only activity that I was better at than David and Melisse.  I could get up on a slalom, jump the wakes like no bodies business and let go to do a whip lash stop practically landing on the dock.
 
I went through the aerobics phase, the jogging phase, jazzercize, snow skiing I even tried my hand at volleyball. Then one day someone invited me to the gym to lift weights.  I was in Austin at grad school. I was hooked.  I am not a power lifter, just a run of the mill gym rat. While my weight might fluctuate, my muscles have not.  Being strong, fit and toned is important to me.

As it happens, lifting weights uses lots of oxygen, oxygen that I don’t have.  So, my muscles are starting to turn into jello.  Mrs. Beaumont’s arms have always pushed me to obsessiveness when it comes to working out my triceps.  It is a fight against gravity and I have always won, that is until now.  I can not bear it.  I would almost rather die than have flabby arms. Dang you, Mrs. Beaumont.
Me at Swim Meet

5 thoughts on “Mrs. Beaumont, My Inspiration”

Comments