My doctor looked right over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses and told me I needed to start exercising before my joints rusted completely shut. He said it with the kind of cheerful authority that only belongs to men who eat bran flakes for breakfast and run three miles before the sun comes up. I sat there in that paper-covered examination table, feeling the springs groan underneath my weight, and nodded like I had the slightest intention of following his advice.

The truth was my left knee had been clicking like a loose gate latch for three weeks, and my lower back felt like a sack of damp gravel every time I bent down to tie my work boots. But the way he said it made me feel like an old tractor left out in the weeds behind the barn. So I drove straight from the clinic parking lot over to the community recreation center off Elm Street, mainly because my wife Martha had been hinting that I spent too much time sitting in my recliner watching the History Channel.

The building smelled like chlorinated pool water and floor wax that had been baked under fluorescent tubes for thirty years. I paid the twenty-five-dollar monthly fee out of stubborn pride and walked through the heavy double doors into the weight room. I immediately wished I had stayed in the truck.

Everyone in that room looked like they were training to repel an invasion.

There were fellows half my age lifting bars loaded down with enough iron to anchor a barge, grunting like hogs every time they pushed the weight back up. I stood near the water fountain in my old canvas sneakers and a faded gray t-shirt, feeling about as out of place as a stray dog at a church social.

A young trainer with arms the size of Thanksgiving hams walked over and smiled. He had white teeth and a clipboard tucked under his arm like he was carrying state secrets.

“First time here, sir?” he asked.

“Something like that,” I said. “Usually my exercise involves walking out to the mailbox and wondering why the county road department can’t grade our gravel properly.”

He laughed, probably just to be polite, and tapped his pen against the paper. “What’s your fitness goal for today?”

I looked around at the racks of heavy plates and the mirrors lining the walls. “I’d like to be able to tie my shoes without making weird noises.”

He didn’t blink an eye. He just nodded very seriously. “Excellent goal. We can work with that.”

Then he reached down and handed me a pair of twenty-pound dumbbells like they were bags of sugar at the grocery store. I took them, and my arms immediately felt like they were attached to two wet noodles. I looked at the black rubber weights and then back up at him.

“I don’t even carry groceries this heavy,” I said.

He grinned. “Give me ten reps!”

I sighed, planted my feet on the rubber mat, and said, “I’ll give you one really emotional rep.”

I managed to lift them up about halfway to my chest while my face turned the color of a ripe plum. After thirty seconds, I was breathing like I’d climbed Mount Everest in a wool sweater. The trainer stood there watching me with that relentless cheerfulness that only personal trainers seem to master.

“Feeling the burn?” he asked.

I dropped the dumbbells onto the rack with a heavy clatter that made three people look over from the bench press. I put my hands on my knees and caught my breath.

“No,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. “I’m feeling retirement.”

I walked right back out to the front desk, handed the young lady my paper key card, and canceled my gym membership before my truck engine had even cooled down in the parking lot. Martha asked me how it went when I got home, and I told her the equipment was entirely too heavy for a man of my refined sedentary habits.

Now I get all my exercise the old-fashioned way, which mostly consists of looking for my reading glasses.

I hide them so often around the house that I hit 10,000 steps before breakfast just trying to find where I set them down while reading the morning paper. Yesterday I found them sitting on top of the microwave next to a box of crackers I don’t remember opening. Tomorrow I will probably find them in the refrigerator behind the butter dish. It keeps the joints moving and the blood flowing, and the best part is nobody yells at me to give them ten more reps.