I recently decided that even though I'm way past my physical prime (if I ever had one), it was time to start exercising. I eased into it a few years ago with a water exercise class -- should be fairly painless to use the scary-looking torture instruments upstairs, then cool off with the water class, I thought.

The fit, enthusiastic people at the gym are helpful. I asked which machines are best to begin on when a person is well past minimum voting age, with absolutely no muscles to speak of, and they demonstrated them for me. Nobody hangs over my sweating shoulder, watching and giving tips, which would have driven me back into the pool immediately, but they're quick and friendly if I ask for help when I can't figure out how to make a contraption work. Unfortunately, the contraption usually isn't working because I'm not exerting enough power to budge the weights off their resting place.

My fellow sufferers are kind. One woman even said, "Hey, it's working. I can see the difference!" I knew she was lying, but what the heck. I'll take whatever crumbs are thrown my way. I'll admit it's a little embarrassing when the hard-muscled person on the machine in the next row is gasping and grunting with every exertion because he's been punishing himself for 20 minutes by rapidly increasing the difficulty level, while I'm trudging to nowhere with dogged deter-mination, desperately watching the tread-counter. I know when it hits 400, I can move on to the torso-twisting thingamajig, which is much kinder, especially if I forget to increase the weights.

I hauled my aching body into the house the other day and my husband asked brightly, "Did you have fun?" I dropped my gym bag on his foot and snapped, "Are you out of your *#@& mind? You've been married to me for 53 years and ask a dumb question like that?"

Exercise has never been my forte, obviously. Maybe if I'd had the physical coordination of the average toddler I'd have been good at games, and experienced FUN exercise. But as a friend (I thought she was a friend) once told me, I was lucky to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. So I usually expended a lot of mental exercise thinking up ways to get out of the physical exercise offered by games. I never could convince myself it was enjoyable to get out there and make a fool of myself while being cheered by the opposing team.

Luckily, our kids inherited their dad's physical abilities. I tried to be a good sport about it. Once when they were young. I thought day hikes might be fun. We drove up in the hills, shrugged into our backpacks and walked about 50 feet into a meadow, where we were attacked by swarms of mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. The run back to the car was the exercise of the day. Unfortunately, I'd packed us a really tasty picnic lunch, which undid the good of the short run.

We climbed Beacon Rock once. Sounds so impressive I hate to reveal it was on a path with hand-rails. Still, it was a tough climb. After what felt like several days we finally reached the top. The rest of the family gasped at the beauty of the Columbia River and rolling green hills far below. I was gasping, all right, but all I saw was a dark haze lit by little silver shooting stars. I finally stopped wheezing a few miles from home.

I did like hunting, though. Sometimes I got lots of fresh air on those hunting hikes, before shopping malls were enclosed. Lloyd Center in Portland was probably the most beneficial place to hunt for bargains, until they remodeled it and made it an enclosed mall.

If not for my past history, I could blame hating exercise on my age. Everybody knows how maturity tempers the eagerness of young people to sweat and strain their muscles. After our granddaughter's recent wedding, we had a barbecue in the backyard for friends their age who hadn't gotten together for a while.

It was a hot, humid afternoon, but those idiots leaped into volleyball and badminton just as soon as they could trade their wedding clothes for shorts and T-shirts. I kept waiting for one of them to have a heat-stroke, grateful we're close enough to a hospital that we probably wouldn't have to worry about calling an ambulance. But when they got overheated, they just grabbed more cold sodas out of the cooler. The males sometimes took time to pour the melted ice water over their heads. Nobody even needed first aid.

So since I can't use age for an excuse, I'll just continue to trudge to nowhere on the elliptical machine. On the plus side, I recently went shopping, and got in a couple more hours than usual before dropping. My husband's re-thinking the exercise regime. He's not so sure that's a plus!

* Donna Scofield is a freelance writer whose articles, columns and short fiction stories have appeared in numerous national and regional magazines. The longtime Yakima resident is retired after working as a secretary and office manager in Yakima School District elementary schools. She has raised two sons and two daughters.