Since all of you own cars, go everywhere by car, you do not fully understand the problems car create.
Every summer I play tennis daily -- have played tennis daily for 25 years. I never warm up, never do stretching exercises before I hurtle my body full force all over the court. How foolish, how idiotic not to do warm ups. I'm 60 years old - don't I realize I will injure myself if I don't stretch my muscles before I hurtle around the court?
Well I never have injured myself -- and that's because I always bicycle two miles to play tennis. By the time I get to the tennis court, I have warmed up. I have already done stretching exercise. Of course I never injure myself. Last summer, for all the wrong reasons, I began to drive a car to tennis. I pulled a groin muscle two months ago. It still hasn't healed. This would never have happened if I didn't own a car.
Every winter my weight balloons up -- it especially balloons up if I own a car. If I own a car, I drive out to buy a piece of pastry. If I own a car I drive to all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant. Owning a car means impulse shopping, impulse eating. You do not begin to understand what cars are doing to you; I know what cars are doing to me.
I keep telling my son I want him to take my car away from me. He doesn't fully believe me because I keep telling him how well the car handles, what a pleasure it is to drive.
That's the problem. Cars are too easy. Cars make us lazy & fat. No wonder we are the fattest nation on earth. We would be less likely to stuff ourselves to death -- to eat on impulse -- if the impulse had to be preceded by a long bicycle ride in the snow. I cannot tell you how many times I've decided I wasn't really hungry -- I didn't really need that piece of junk now -- when I knew I had to put on layers & layer of clothing and brave the elements.
Alternatively, I cannot explain what a pleasure it is to bicycle in the winter. Of course you don't want to do it. Of course it looks brutally cold out there. But once you are out there, you feel healthy, young. You know you are giving your body a work out. You feel good -- and the bicycle exercise is doing wonders for your body.
Take my car, please. Help me get rid of this burdensome beast, this temptation which wrecks my body -- the only body I have. If I own a car, my body deteriorates. If I ride a bike I feel young and my body performs wonders to behold.
In a book entitled The View in Winter -- which is about ageing -- the writer found that the healthiest group of old people he encountered were Dons at the Universities of Cambridge And Oxford. These people bicycled daily until they were well into their 80s. They had a healthy mind in a healthy body. Take my car, please.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein