#39 - Learn how to Hula Hoop complete!
I’m fairly certain that as a kid I knew how to hula hoop. I don’t have any distinct memories of actually hula hooping, but still. All kids can hula hoop, right? Between, what I’m now sure were my golden hooping years and today I somehow lost the ability to keep aloft a spinning hoop around my waist.
Now, I’m a curvy girl. I’ve got hips! I’ve got a butt! Both of which seem perfectly designed for making sure a hula hoop never hits the ground. But no. Sadly, in the last few years every time I’ve tried to hula hoop it’s quickly fallen to the ground like I had the hips of an eleven year-old boy.
The bigger question might be: how, as a grown-ass woman, do I keep getting into situations where there is a hula hoop and pressure to succeed at said hooping? I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is that I wanted to figure out what I couldn’t figure out and then spin a hoop around my waist.
Enter my old friend Susan. A friend I’ve known since elementary school. I’ve had sleepovers at her house, I finally admitted that I didn’t believe in santa claus to my parents in her living room. At Susan’s I once encouraged her to go outside to show me how fast she could run down the street all so I could sneak an oreo (something that never graced the shelves at my house). I quickly learned one cannot sneak an oreo as oreo’s get completely stuck all over teeth as soon as you try to chew them up. She caught me, I think I still tried to deny it. Sorry, Susan!
Anyhoo – Susan knows how to hula hoop. She also knows how to make hula hoops. And she offered to show me the way. So this past Saturday night we gathered in my building’s party room to learn how to hula hoop. Apparently, it’s not like learning to dance. It’s more like learning how to snow board – when your body finally feels what it feels like to do it right you’ll stop faceplanting on the mountain. Sure, you want to place your feet in a certain kind of way and move your hips in a certain kind of way and it should work. However, time and time again I would spin the hoop around my waist and it would quickly fall to the ground. I tried barely moving my hips like my lovely friends seemed to be doing – and the hula hoop fell. Mostly, I ended up moving my hips wildly around in a desperate attempt to keep it going. Every time the hoop went around more then a few times my friends all cheered! And I just did it over and over and over and over again. I have the bruises to prove it. Seriously. My side is completely bruised from hula hooping.
But, finally, I got it. I spun the hoop one more time and something clicked. I looked at my friend Wynn, who I swear had been hooping non-stop since she’d walked in, and said, “Ah. This is how it feels to hula hoop.”
I’m still figuring it out, trying to keep recreating the muscle memory. And endurance. you need endurance to hula hoop! And also, I need to toughen up my sides. the bruises smart.
