I live in tennies, as we used to call canvas shoes. I own two pairs: one is a classic mid-20th-century women’s model, the other a unisex style – a twist on a basketball shoe. The classic model is prettier, but the other is roomier.
Why are they tennies? Perhaps people did play tennis in canvas shoes at one time. Nowadays, my beloved tennies are usually referred to as sneakers, and indeed, when I lived on on the east coast, I yielded to common usage (“sneakers”) rather than try to communicate with midwestern “dialect” (“tennies”).
Does the name matter? My mother loved Keds, the most popular brand, because they were inexpensive and could be washed in the washing machine. At the end of summer she threw ours out, but got several years of use out of hers.
And then there were the fall tennies. We were required to wear white canvas shoes in gym class. Mom fumed: “Why white? They’re hard to clean.” Yes, why make extra work for Mom? Typical of everything about gym class: make everyone hate it!
My return to tennies this August has been the hallmark of recovery from My Semi-Invalid Summer, as I refer to it dramatically. I have already mentioned my so-called sports injury in mid-June. The cause, ironically, was not a sport, but an intensive yoga class meant to keep one ultra-fit. Unfortunately, it did not work for me: by the end of the first session, I could barely bend my suddenly-swollen ankles, puffy knees, or weakened wrists. In order to sit on the floor to do gentle stretching exercises, I have had to kneel on two pillows, then lean on my forearms, then roll onto my back, and pull up my aching legs with my hands.
“This is how it feels to grow old,” I thought as I struggled to bend my knees enough to sit in the bathtub.
This yoga class with horrible consequences reminded me of gym classes of yore, when a baleful gym teacher with a whistle round her neck and wincing-white tennis shoes bellowed at us to run faster, to climb a rope, which I rebelliously declined to try, or to criticize my jumping jacks, which were “all wrong. You’re jumping too high.”
In general, yoga is a gentler sport. But in this fast-moving yoga class, everything is much accelerated. You rapidly shift your body from a sphinx pose, or perhaps a cobra, up to a plank, which is a stationary high push-up, and then up to a downward dog, and then again… and again… and again, faster and faster.
And so, after a month and a half of alternating rest with gentle exercise (my own personally-designed regimen), and constant popping of Advil (you don’t want to go the pain pill route – stick with Advil or Tylenol!), I am almost back to normal. That is, if I never miss a gentle exercise session again.
And now I can wear my tennies when I feel like it. I don’t have to wear super-sensible oversized super-supportive walking shoes every time I go out. The tennies are a symbol of youth. Who knew? You don’t wear them for long walks, but for joyous short rambles,bike rides, or when you’re out in the garden.
Keep on truckin’, but avoid excessively vigorous exercise.
Competitive yoga! A twenty-first century sport!
That’s what it sounds like, anyway. I thought the whole point of yoga was that it isn’t a sport or competitive.
It’s interesting about the terms, In England I never came across “sneakers”, “tennis shoes” or “tennies”. We had “plimsoles”(?spelling), “pumps”, “trainers” or “training shoes” – the last for formal gym sessions. There may have been formal differences between them, but children didn’t know.
The yoga poses are innocuous, until you speed them up . Yes, now that you mention it, this power yoga was a “competitive sport.”
Prue, one of the judges on the British Bake-off, wears colorful plimsolls/sneakers/trainers/tennies.
I told you my story about yoga. What really gets me is all the phony rituals around it too.
Some yoga teachers skip the “spiritual” talk, but there was no “breath” for any of that chat in this misguided class.