Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Hi, Hi Khalila Holt Steve E. Layin, senior
Speaker 2: producer of Heavyweight.
Speaker 3: You're managing producer. Is that your title?
Speaker 2: Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3: We have some stories for the people today.
Speaker 2: We do. We each have a story for the people who.
Speaker 3: Should go first? Great question, Thank you. I'm an interviewer.
Speaker 2: I think we should rock paper scissors for it?
Speaker 3: Okay on? Shoot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Are we going to say it?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I think we have to say it for this audio,
Speaker 4: so it'll be like rock paper scissor shooting.
Speaker 3: Then you say either rock paper or scissors.
Speaker 2: You don't say rock paper scissors said, shoot.
Speaker 3: No, why wet rock on a paper and scissors can't talk?
Speaker 2: This is the way though we grew up doing it
Speaker 2: rock papers or says, shoot, just it just sounds better.
Speaker 4: I think it's weird. Rock paper scissors. Shoot, it's just
Speaker 4: an easy beat.
Speaker 2: Okay, rock papers shoot paper? Oh oh wow, oh my god,
Speaker 2: we're so line.
Speaker 3: All right, I guess we have to do it again, rock.
Speaker 2: Paper sister, shoot rock Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: This is going terribly okay?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, come on, come on, all right, rock rock
Speaker 2: paper sister, shoot paper?
Speaker 1: Come on?
Speaker 4: Also, I feel like we're doing the rock paper scissors
Speaker 4: part so slow it's like a funeral dird.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's try.
Speaker 2: Here we go, raw paper sisters, shoes.
Speaker 3: Are there? We go?
Speaker 2: All right, I guess I'm up first, All right, take
Speaker 2: it away. A few years ago, my family all got
Speaker 2: together at my grandma's house, and as always, she insisted
Speaker 2: on feeding us, even though we had dinner reservations in
Speaker 2: like an hour. So along with the nuts and crackers
Speaker 2: and lukewarm spanakopaa bites, my grandma had gotten this fruit
Speaker 2: salad from Whole Foods, one of those pre made ones
Speaker 2: in the big plastic tubs. So we're all eating it,
Speaker 2: and about two thirds of the way through it, someone
Speaker 2: notices that a little bit of the fruit at the bottom,
Speaker 2: just like a strawberrier two, had gone bad. And we
Speaker 2: were like, you know whatever, we can just pick around it,
Speaker 2: but my grandma was like, no, stop, don't touch it.
Speaker 2: I'll return it. And we were all like, Grandma, what
Speaker 2: are you talking about. We've already eaten most of it,
Speaker 2: like they're not going to take it back now, but
Speaker 2: my grandma was like, no, it's rotten. It was expensive,
Speaker 2: I'm returning it. So the next day, my grandma marches
Speaker 2: into Whole Foods head straight for customer service, and she
Speaker 2: proceeds to make up this whole story about how she
Speaker 2: and my grandpa had my grandpa's boss and his wife
Speaker 2: over for a luncheon, like as though it's the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties or something when people invited their bosses over on
Speaker 2: Sundays for luncheons. Also, my grandma is ninety years old, Like,
Speaker 2: there's no way this woman's husband still works. What is
Speaker 2: he a lamplighter? But anyway, she says, you know, her
Speaker 2: husband's boss came over for lunch and she served the
Speaker 2: fruit basket and the boss's wife noticed that the fruit
Speaker 2: was moldy, and my grandma was so embarrassed, just like mortified.
Speaker 2: I ended up taking the boss and his wife out
Speaker 2: for lunch instead spent fifty dollars on a whole meal
Speaker 2: for them. And she's like, I am a loyal customer.
Speaker 2: I come here every week to buy these little biscotti
Speaker 2: crackers you carry that my husband just loves. They're not cheap,
Speaker 2: by the way, but this fruit incident absolutely spoiled our afternoon,
Speaker 2: and I really think you ought to make it right. Okay,
Speaker 2: Here's what my grandma walked out of Whole Foods with
Speaker 2: a full refund for the original fruit basket, a new
Speaker 2: fruit basket to replace the one that had gone bad,
Speaker 2: a fifty dollars gift card to help cover the cost
Speaker 2: of the imaginary luncheon, and a whole case of those
Speaker 2: little biscotti crackers absolutely free. I have a theory that
Speaker 2: there are two kinds of people in this world, returners
Speaker 2: and non returners. Grandma Ruth returner. Whatever g carries a
Speaker 2: strong sense of justice paired with a distinct lack of
Speaker 2: shame and love of say dramaturgy. She's got it, and
Speaker 2: it's a gene she's passed down to me. I'm also
Speaker 2: a returner. I think I feel about customer service issues
Speaker 2: the way some people must feel about hunting for sport.
Speaker 2: It's a challenge, it's a thrill. How can I prove
Speaker 2: I purchased it here when I've lost my receipt? What
Speaker 2: buttons do I press to get a live representative on
Speaker 2: the line, climbing my way through the phone tree like
Speaker 2: some kind of frantic phone monkey. Sure it's not always
Speaker 2: the most logical use of my time. I'm still fighting
Speaker 2: a year's long battle with a Spanish railroad company for
Speaker 2: a refund on a train that was four hours delayed.
Speaker 2: At this point, I've probably spent more time on the
Speaker 2: phone with them than I spent waiting for the train
Speaker 2: in the first place. But it's the principle of the thing,
Speaker 2: the thing being the money, the principle of the money.
Speaker 2: Come on, kascuocha a little closer, huh.
Speaker 5: I just had some egg salad. I don't know how
Speaker 5: close you want me to be.
Speaker 2: This is Hand, my partner, a staunch non returner. Hand's
Speaker 2: the sort of good natured, mild mannered person who might
Speaker 2: order their egg salad without the celery, then get an
Speaker 2: egg salad just stuffed with celery and not say anything,
Speaker 2: or see that they were charged for an extra beer
Speaker 2: on a busy night at a bar, but pay the
Speaker 2: whole tab plus the strangers just to be nice. Or
Speaker 2: get wrongfully charged by Amazon for hair cream and do
Speaker 2: nothing about it. Oh no, are we doing this. Here's
Speaker 2: what happened. Hand ordered two containers of their favorite hairstyling
Speaker 2: cream from Amazon, but when the package arrived, it was empty, sealed,
Speaker 2: untampered with, but empty. Instead of contacting Amazon, though to say,
Speaker 2: you know, like, hey, you sent me nothing. They just
Speaker 2: went ahead and ordered two more hair creams, and.
Speaker 6: So the second to arrive and they're like all dried up,
Speaker 6: like the way that peanut butter gets like halfway through
Speaker 6: and it's lost a lot of the oil.
Speaker 5: That's what it was like.
Speaker 2: So hand threw those hair creams away, ordered two more,
Speaker 2: and for those of you keeping count, were up to
Speaker 2: four hair creams that they paid for but did not
Speaker 2: get or could not use. How expensive is this hair goop?
Speaker 2: Five each per.
Speaker 5: Goop per goop? I think, yeah, so that's.
Speaker 2: Like eighty four more dollars than you were supposed to
Speaker 2: spend on this stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you didn't like call No, I don't know
Speaker 6: how to get in contact with them.
Speaker 2: Here's how to get in contact with them. Simply google
Speaker 2: Amazon Customer Service phone and dial the number. So what's
Speaker 2: the real issue here?
Speaker 6: I mean, I I think it comes down to like
Speaker 6: wanting to be liked by everybody, and like being a
Speaker 6: people pleaser because of that, and sticking up for yourself
Speaker 6: is definitely at odds with pleasing people.
Speaker 2: That's true. To be a returner, sometimes you have to
Speaker 2: be the bad guy for people, like hand good, well
Speaker 2: liked people. Pleasing people. That's hard to swallow. But I
Speaker 2: want Hand to learn to stick up for themselves. I
Speaker 2: want to show them how easy and satisfying it is.
Speaker 2: I want to teach hand how to be a returner,
Speaker 2: and returning the hair goops is the ideal tutorial. There's
Speaker 2: just one potential obstacle.
Speaker 5: Do I mean to tell you when it was placed?
Speaker 5: I can pull it up really.
Speaker 2: Eazy Amazon's thirty day return policy. Hmm, you're scrolling very
Speaker 2: far right now. It was a really old order, as
Speaker 2: in ten months old, almost a year past the return window.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's a little late to be a you know,
Speaker 6: there's like a lot of things working against you on
Speaker 6: this one.
Speaker 7: Thank you for contacting Amazon.
Speaker 2: When I call Amazon a few days later, I spend
Speaker 2: the first ten minutes or so trying to get a
Speaker 2: real live person on the line.
Speaker 7: Would you allow me to try again and help you today?
Speaker 2: My usual hack where I just keep hitting zero like
Speaker 2: a labrat demanding cocaine doesn't work.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry I didn't get that.
Speaker 2: But finally, the seven magic.
Speaker 7: Words, I'll get someone to help with this.
Speaker 2: The problem with someone when she comes on the phone
Speaker 2: is that she can't find hands order in the system.
Speaker 2: She tells me it must be a glitch on her
Speaker 2: end and that I should hang up and call back.
Speaker 2: But if I call back, well I do, I have
Speaker 2: to wait on hold again and everything. Oh no, will
Speaker 2: it be you.
Speaker 1: I'll just provide the order number right away.
Speaker 2: Uh, but are you going to pick up the phone
Speaker 2: or will it be the robot? Huh?
Speaker 7: Welcome to Amazon Customer Service.
Speaker 2: It's the robot. But eventually, Hi, I thank you for
Speaker 2: calling Amazon Customer Service. This is I explained to my
Speaker 2: new customer service Rep Danica about the dried up creams.
Speaker 2: Fifteen minutes later, she's processed a replacement. It's that easy.
Speaker 2: Then I tell her about the first two creams that
Speaker 2: never arrived, which I'd like to be refunded for.
Speaker 5: Also, our system here is not allowing anymore to.
Speaker 2: Process the refund because it's less already being fast return windows,
Speaker 2: so we didn't have any options here. A thought flashes
Speaker 2: through my mind. W W g D, what would grandma?
Speaker 8: Do?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Just because I'm a loyal customer, you know, and I've
Speaker 2: been with you guys for so long, is there any
Speaker 2: way that like we can get a refund for the
Speaker 2: amount as like a credit on my Amazon account.
Speaker 3: Okay, lets me just double check it out.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry second, sure.
Speaker 6: Okay, yes, I successfully your brotherss this to ask a
Speaker 6: promotional credit for the full amount.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, I really, I really appreciate yours really
Speaker 2: helpful today.
Speaker 6: Hurry I would greet be ahead and.
Speaker 2: Now okay, yeah you too. Bye.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Off the phone, I start fantasizing about telling Hannd what
Speaker 2: I've done. They didn't think I could do it, and
Speaker 2: I have. They're going to be so happy with me.
Speaker 2: I've really done a good thing here today.
Speaker 6: And hello, you can now end the call.
Speaker 2: Oh oh I have to end it. Oh oh you
Speaker 2: can't do it. Oh yeah, sorry about that? All right,
Speaker 2: thank you so much? Bye?
Speaker 5: Hey, how's it gone? How did it go?
Speaker 2: I tell Hann how easy it was, how all I
Speaker 2: had to do was call and wait and talk to
Speaker 2: a first representative, then call back and wait, then talk
Speaker 2: to someone else, then get the first refund, then negotiate
Speaker 2: for the promotional credit, which was a pretty baller move
Speaker 2: on my part, I think. But Hann is not as
Speaker 2: jazzed about it as I thought they'd be. All they
Speaker 2: can really muster is a somewhat forced Damn Steve, good job,
Speaker 2: and then a much more genuine.
Speaker 5: Sounds like Amazon has some very good customer service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you feel good about Is there like a
Speaker 2: feeling of relief about it?
Speaker 6: I already got over it, you know, I got over
Speaker 6: it many many months ago.
Speaker 2: The tutorial was a complete failure. I'd wanted to show
Speaker 2: hannd that it's worth it to be a returner. I'd
Speaker 2: wanted them to feel how gratifying it is. I'd wanted
Speaker 2: them to share in my delight simply. I'd wanted them
Speaker 2: to care. Hello, Grandma, Yes, So instead I call someone
Speaker 2: who will care pretty good, right, absolutely?
Speaker 5: I just sh you'd have gotten more.
Speaker 2: I told hand and they were sort of like, I
Speaker 2: don't really care. I think this is a bigger deal
Speaker 2: to you than to me. And it made me think, like,
Speaker 2: what do you think it is about us that makes
Speaker 2: us care about this more than other people do?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 8: I think it's not an unusual feeling to want to
Speaker 8: be reimbursed the harm done, but not everyone has to
Speaker 8: feel the same way about things.
Speaker 2: Did Grandpa care about this stuff as much as you? No?
Speaker 8: No, I did it. It was not usually involved. He
Speaker 8: let me take care of it. He I don't think
Speaker 8: he really cared.
Speaker 2: My grandfather passed away a few years ago.
Speaker 8: You know, Grandpa and I were very different generally. I
Speaker 8: think he took things a little easier than I h
Speaker 8: but it worked.
Speaker 5: We kind of gave.
Speaker 8: Well, you have to give and take in relationship, Stevie,
Speaker 8: you have to give and take.
Speaker 2: There are two kinds of people in this world, returners
Speaker 2: and non returners, and sometimes, if they're lucky, they find
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, Yes, yes, we had We had a very a
Speaker 8: very unusual relationship because look how long it lasted. Yeah,
Speaker 8: seventy four years. Those guys together seventy four years.
Speaker 2: Hanna and I have not been together seventy four years,
Speaker 2: but I hope that we are. And I know it
Speaker 2: means I'll be the one who is bothering the waiter.
Speaker 2: I'll have to point out the extra charges on checks,
Speaker 2: but it's a small price to pay. Hann calls me there,
Speaker 2: send it back, girlfriend, And though they say it in jest,
Speaker 2: it actually makes me feel proud. I love them. I'd
Speaker 2: send a thousand egg salads back for them. My grandparents
Speaker 2: aren't all that religious. Didn't belong to a temple, But
Speaker 2: when my grandfather died, my grandma wanted a service, so
Speaker 2: my family found a rabbi and a local synagogue. My
Speaker 2: grandma paid to reserve the synagogue's main sanctuary, a room
Speaker 2: with big windows and a beautiful view where the proceedings
Speaker 2: were to be held. But the night before the service,
Speaker 2: a pipe burst and the main sanctuary flooded. When we arrived,
Speaker 2: we found out we would be in the synagogue's library
Speaker 2: room instead, which, though perfectly fine, was more of an
Speaker 2: all purpose room lined with bookshelves. The one window I
Speaker 2: remember looked out onto the parking lot.
Speaker 8: I was expecting this nice room, and that's what I wanted,
Speaker 8: so I was disappointed. I wanted the funeral to be
Speaker 8: and I was special because study was special.
Speaker 2: So as we all filed in for my grandfather's service,
Speaker 2: my grandmother refused to step one foot over the threshold.
Speaker 2: She crossed her arms and raised her chin. She asked
Speaker 2: to speak to someone in charge, and then, in what
Speaker 2: I see as her final act of love for my grandfather,
Speaker 2: my grandmother got his eight hundred dollars funeral absolutely free.
Speaker 2: After the break, Khalila takes a risk.
Speaker 4: In high school, I, like many children across our dilapidated nation,
Speaker 4: was forced to take the Presidential Fitness Test. It was
Speaker 4: actually a series of tests dating back to the Eisenhower
Speaker 4: administration and possibly designed by Dwight d himself during breaks
Speaker 4: from the space race. We took the Presidential Fitness Test,
Speaker 4: once at the beginning of the year and then again
Speaker 4: at the end, the idea being that after nine months
Speaker 4: of school sponsored exercise, school sponsored lunches, and backpacks weighed
Speaker 4: down with school sponsored textbooks, we'd be stronger. There was
Speaker 4: a test to count your situps and another to count
Speaker 4: your push ups. My number of push ups was always zero.
Speaker 4: At the end of my sophomore year, I begged my
Speaker 4: gym partner to write down one, just.
Speaker 3: One push up.
Speaker 4: That would be dishonest, she said, thinking a big zero
Speaker 4: on the page. But the worst was a waking nightmare
Speaker 4: called the Pacer test. The gym teacher would put on
Speaker 4: this recording a series of progressively faster beeps, and we
Speaker 4: all had to run across the gym in one big
Speaker 4: herd before the next beap sounded. When you couldn't do
Speaker 4: it anymore, you peeled away from the pack and you
Speaker 4: sat down I'd get tired almost immediately, but the idea
Speaker 4: of singling myself out as the worst in the class,
Speaker 4: with everyone watching and smirking, was more than I could take.
Speaker 4: It was a feeling that persisted throughout my youth, this
Speaker 4: fear of being exposed as the weakest one in the room.
Speaker 4: I really wanted to be sporty. I went through a
Speaker 4: whole tomboy phase for me. This just meant reading historical
Speaker 4: baseball novels, deciding I liked teams named after birds, and
Speaker 4: circulating a petition called get Shoeless Joe Jackson into the
Speaker 4: Hall of Fame. I simply was an athletic. During my
Speaker 4: short lived career in youth softball, someone hit a pop
Speaker 4: fly right at me. I watched as the ball arcs
Speaker 4: through the air, and then I just stood there, stocks
Speaker 4: still as it landed at my feet with a PLoP. Okay,
Speaker 4: the coach side. When the ball comes, try to, you know,
Speaker 4: catch it. It wasn't until my adulthood that I realized
Speaker 4: I actually like exercising. I just don't like being perceived exercising,
Speaker 4: And throughout my childhood the two wet hand in hand.
Speaker 4: Both a little privacy and moving is fun. I realized
Speaker 4: that I like hiking when I'm alone and not panting. Sorry,
Speaker 4: go ahead, guys, I'm gonna stop and check out this moss.
Speaker 4: I like yoga and I'm in the back row and
Speaker 4: the teacher doesn't look at me. I like dance cardio
Speaker 4: when I pull it up on a video in my
Speaker 4: bedroom and tell my partner, under no circumstances enter this bedroom.
Speaker 4: If the house is on fire, let me burn. But
Speaker 4: I'm only able to do these things because.
Speaker 3: I'm not visible.
Speaker 4: There's this whole other realm of fitness, but I continue
Speaker 4: to avoid these classes that seem all about being visible.
Speaker 3: They're taken by.
Speaker 4: Toned women with blown out hair and the right kind
Speaker 4: of trendy water bottle. Women who would truly wrinkle their
Speaker 4: noses at me, smelling my weakness like one of those
Speaker 4: animals Gerbils, but devour their runtiest children their spin There's
Speaker 4: bar and at the top of this glamorous, impossible seeming
Speaker 4: pyramid of exercise is pilates. Charlene starts posting all these
Speaker 4: Instagram stories about plates. Charlene is my friend from high school,
Speaker 4: and we're very different people. She works a high paying
Speaker 4: finance job and is constantly taking videos in nightclubs, whereas
Speaker 4: I was just laid off from an industry and collapse
Speaker 4: and only take videos of cats and fish.
Speaker 3: Even so, we're close.
Speaker 4: I'm curious about pilates, I respond to our recent story,
Speaker 4: but it terrifies me. She says, we have to go
Speaker 4: to a class together. On the one hand, it feels
Speaker 4: safer to go with Charlene. I'll be able to look
Speaker 4: at her to know what to do. On the other hand,
Speaker 4: she'll be able to look at me and judge me
Speaker 4: and think with pity in her heart about me. Wow,
Speaker 4: that's sad. We pick a day I am locked in.
Speaker 4: It turns out I know nothing about pilates. I've been
Speaker 4: thinking about it as harder yoga for hot people, but
Speaker 4: pilates is actually done on a large device called a reformer.
Speaker 4: When I go to the website for the studio will
Speaker 4: be attending, I'm excited to see a tab called new Timers,
Speaker 4: which isn't the expression first timers, but it just tells
Speaker 4: me I will need gripsocks available for purchase fifteen to
Speaker 4: twenty dollars. We push up to become better. The site
Speaker 4: tells me we plank to become stronger, we lunge deeper
Speaker 4: so we can climb over the steepest hill to see
Speaker 4: the beauty on the other side. When I go to
Speaker 4: book my spot, I realize with horror that there is
Speaker 4: no back row for me to hide in. There is
Speaker 4: only one long first row. Also, pilateus is expensive to take.
Speaker 4: A single class costs more than a movie ticket, while
Speaker 4: also being shorter and more painful than a movie. Plus,
Speaker 4: no one ever tells you to buy grip socks to
Speaker 4: see a movie. When I'm texting Charlene, I notice that
Speaker 4: my phone keeps auto correcting pilates so that the P
Speaker 4: is capitalized. This, I discover, is because Pilates is named
Speaker 4: after a man. Joseph hubertis Pilates in the black and
Speaker 4: white pictures I find online. He's a compact fellow with
Speaker 4: a tuft of white hair and a twinkle in his eye,
Speaker 4: kind of like a really ripped Trumpelstiltskin. He invented Pilates
Speaker 4: while in an internment camp on the Isle of Man.
Speaker 4: This is so shocking to me that I start bringing
Speaker 4: it up to everyone I meet. I'm suddenly obsessed with
Speaker 4: talking about Pilates, and I haven't even taken the class yet, Hi,
Speaker 4: I need.
Speaker 3: To Khalila Holt.
Speaker 2: I've never been here before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the studio staff welcome me warmly, but well, I'm
Speaker 4: checking in. I noticed that the picture on their brochure
Speaker 4: is a bunch of people holding a plank over a
Speaker 4: chasm of empty space. When I find my machine, it
Speaker 4: looks like something between a guynecologist's table and a printing press,
Speaker 4: if either of those things had about five times more knobs.
Speaker 4: The instructor comes over and starts pointing, this is the carriage.
Speaker 4: This is the back kickpad. When I say two red,
Speaker 4: one gray, pull on these springs. When I say Toes
Speaker 4: five six, you put your feet here, I nod like
Speaker 4: I'm following. Other women begin to arrive. They all seem
Speaker 4: to have gotten the memo that you're meant to come
Speaker 4: to pilates in a tasteful athleisure set where your sage
Speaker 4: toned sportspra matches your sage toned leggings. I meanwhile, I'm
Speaker 4: wearing a T shirt stained with fake blood from an
Speaker 4: old Halloween costume. By the time Charlene walks in, looking
Speaker 4: fresh off and outing to Lulu Lemon, I'm perched on
Speaker 4: the end of the reformer, afraid to touch anything, fear
Speaker 4: of somehow getting my hand stuck. Hey christ Charlene, ready
Speaker 4: to be a pilateus girly. Pilates is a little like
Speaker 4: boot camp, if instead of preparing for war, you are
Speaker 4: preparing to look hot. The instructor shouts at us through
Speaker 4: a loud mic that's hard to hear under the blasting
Speaker 4: tones of songs like numb mo Encore and other such
Speaker 4: hits from middle school dances past. I'm used to yoga,
Speaker 4: where they go on and on about how there's no
Speaker 4: judgment and you can rest at any time. If you
Speaker 4: try to rest in pilates, the instructor beerates you on
Speaker 4: her loud mic by going, come on, you have to try.
Speaker 4: The whole thing is baffling because I don't understand any
Speaker 4: of it. I mostly try to copy Charlene. The good
Speaker 4: news is that every time we switch to a new move,
Speaker 4: it takes me so long to figure out what's happening
Speaker 4: that I don't have to hold it for very long.
Speaker 3: We move our arms.
Speaker 4: To lift a weighted part of the machine. We plank,
Speaker 4: we lie, we squat, lunge, plank, squat, lunge again. But differently,
Speaker 4: plank again, but on the back this time. Every time
Speaker 4: the instructor walks by, I get nervous that she might
Speaker 4: tell me I'm doing something wrong, which I almost certainly am.
Speaker 4: I know that this is normal and that she's here
Speaker 4: to teach, but still all I can think is, don't
Speaker 4: look at me. At one point, she tells us to
Speaker 4: look up towards the wall, and I do great, Khalila,
Speaker 4: she says on her mic, and I'm filled with a
Speaker 4: swell of pride. And then she announces it is time
Speaker 4: for push ups, and for the first time in my life,
Speaker 4: I overcome my long history of humiliation, and I managed
Speaker 4: to do a perfect push up.
Speaker 3: Just kidding.
Speaker 4: I tactically take a water break and I skip the
Speaker 4: push ups all together. And that's our class, the instructor says.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised it's already over. Charlne turns to look at me,
Speaker 4: sprinted tastefully in sweat that she says was the hardest
Speaker 4: class I've ever taken. On my way out, they hand
Speaker 4: me one of the brochures with the people planking. You
Speaker 4: did great today, the instructor tells me, which I know
Speaker 4: is not true, but I guess I did do that
Speaker 4: wall looking thing. I'm surprised by how good I feel,
Speaker 4: like I've tapped into my body's potential. I imagine it's much
Speaker 4: the same way a mother might feel as she finds
Speaker 4: the strength to lift a car off her child, only
Speaker 4: in this case, the car is a routine fitness class
Speaker 4: and the child is myself. Charlene and I step outside
Speaker 4: into the sun. I was really struggling, she says, I
Speaker 4: didn't notice. I tell her, well, yeah, she says, as
Speaker 4: we start walking. It's so hard that all your focus
Speaker 4: has to be on what you're doing. You only look
Speaker 4: at other people to make sure you're doing the right move.
Speaker 3: It's true, I.
Speaker 4: Realize when you're holding a plank over a chasm of
Speaker 4: empty space, the only thing you're thinking about is how
Speaker 4: hard it is to keep holding the plank and how
Speaker 4: you don't want to fall into the chasm of empty space.
Speaker 4: Who has the stamina to be judgmentally glancing all around
Speaker 4: not me. I didn't notice a single other person the
Speaker 4: whole class, which means, in all likelihood, no one.
Speaker 3: Noticed me either.
Speaker 4: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me khalill Holt.
Speaker 2: And me Stevie Lane, along with Phoebe flan again.
Speaker 4: Our executive producer is Jonathan Goldstein. Our production council is
Speaker 4: Jake Flanagin.
Speaker 2: Jake Gorsky mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,
Speaker 2: John K. Sampson, Bluetot Sessions, John Jacoby, Michael Hurst, and
Speaker 2: Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Aaron Paulow.
Speaker 4: I'd like to give a special thanks to my Plate
Speaker 4: Studio because I love it.
Speaker 2: Now Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight, Instagram at Heavyweight podcast,
Speaker 2: or email us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot Fm.
Speaker 4: Jonathan will be back here next week with a brand
Speaker 4: new episode about what he did in his year off.
Speaker 3: So tune in.
Speaker 2: Great episode, Khalila
Speaker 4: Great Episode, Stevie,