9-11

On the morning of 9.1.01, I was getting ready to leave and teach my college exercise class when I heard the first plane news. We didn't know at 5:30 AM in California that it was a major airliner or that it was intentional. I announced to my class that a plane had hit the towers. A student got a call minutes later that it was a LARGE plane. By September 12th, it was painfully obvious. My first reaction as usual was to resort to fitness and health. The way I see it, when you are weak or perceived as weak, someone somewhere is going to kick your ass. When you have a nation in general that is fat and out of shape, then I'd say that is weak. It was no surprise we got our asses kicked. My message on the 12th was and still is to Get Fit and Be Strong. Actually, it was because of 9-11 that I began using this tag line on ALL my handouts and ALL my webpages. It's a reminder of what can happen when you are weak--you get your ass kicked. My oldest daughter Alicia was also a student at Barnard College and Columbia in NYC that day. I did not know if she was dead or alive for hours, and when I did find out she was out of the Ground Zero area, did not know for days if she was still going to be in immediate danger of being killed. These are my reflections today. Alicia is alive and well. I'm still telling people to get off their fat asses and get in shape before we revisit 9-11. America is still fat and horribly unfit--and weak in many ways. Some things have not changed much. I hope some things DO change and quickly. I hope you listen. From the frontlines of corporate WELLness, Coach RJ