I do not enjoy exercising. I exercise intermittently, but I take breaks that last days, weeks, months.

My spouse ensures that those breaks do not last for years. She loves to exercise. She also fervently believes that I am still alive only because she feeds me healthy food and goads me into exercising.

She ignores the reality that while she is 66 years old, I am a few months shy of 76 years old. That decade makes a difference.

The knees that barked at me when I was 66 now howl when I jog. The shoulders that creaked during pushups now lock up in a “You really think we’re gonna do this?” refusal to allow my arms to dip and rise.

So I … well, I cheat.

“Did you do your exercises today?” my wife will ask.

“Why, yes, dear; of course I did!” I will exclaim.

She gives me the old side-eye.

“You are lying, aren’t you?” she will say.

“Why, no, dear, of course I am not lying!” I will reply.

See, if I know that I am lying, and if she also knows that I am lying, then I am not really lying. Lying, by definition, must involve deception. My wife sees right through me.

So I am not lying. I am merely doing the verbal equivalent of spreading bovine excrement, which is as close as newspaper prose will allow me to come to using a blunter verb to describe my prevarications.

I hate to admit it, but my wife does have a point. I feel better, sleep better, and stay good-natured longer if I get some daily exercise.

But her point explodes into an overreacting dagger aimed directly at my heart when she recites her Facebook-inspired litany of amazingly active near-centenarians, including a nonagenarian female who is still a yoga instructor.

She claimed that Jack LaLanne, the late exercise guru, was still doing pushups the day before he died. I checked with Wikipedia. Yes. “He had been performing his daily workout routine the day before his death,” family member said.

“See?” I exclaimed. “Exercise killed him!”

Yes, she replied — “at age 96. You have 20 years to go.”

Groan.

So I am starting to exercise again — with the same guidebook I used 55 years ago.

“Royal Canadian Air Force” exercise plans for physical fitness has been around in paperback since 1962.

One year after its introduction, four of us, all college students, made New Year’s Day resolutions to follow its 11-minutes-a-day progression to physical fitness.

Fear was our motivation. We were scheduled to attend Army Reserve Officer Training Corps summer camp that year. Returning fellow cadets had terrified us with horror stories about the brutally implacable drill sergeants.

“They won’t even let you eat breakfast unless you can do “00” chin-ups,” we were told. The “00” varied from 10 to 20, depending on who was … umm … spreading bovine excrement just to see the looks of fear on our faces, but we got the point.

The RCAF 5BX plan for men consists of six charts. Each chart has five exercises, done in increasing numbers through 12 “steps” from D-minus to A-plus. The exercises in the second chart are harder than those in the first chart, and so on.

The first set of exercises in the first chart are ridiculously easy: Touch toes two times, lie on floor and just look at your ankles three times, roll onto your stomach and lift your head and feet four times, then do two pushups — from your knees, not from a “plank” position. You finish by jogging in place for 100 paces.

That’s the D-minus level. Six-year-olds could stop at Level B.

Back in 1963, we were supposed to spend one day at each level.

Twenty-year-olds were supposed to maintain Chart 5’s Level B-plus: 28 touch-floor and full-circle hand swings, 36 ab crunches (actually, 72; touching both knees counts as one); 47 raises of head and feet, arms extended, while lying on stomach; 40 super-pushups, doing a hand-clap at each rise-up; and a one-mile run within seven minutes.

I am still alive because I never got to that murderous level. But we did get close, and breezed through the physical fitness parts of that summer camp.

These days, the RCAF 5BX plan says … well, it does not say what 76-year-old men should maintain. It just hints: 65-year-olds should spend two weeks at each level, and 60-year-olds should get halfway up Chart 2, which consists of 19 regular toe-touches, 14 single ab crunches, nine head-leg raises, five regular pushups, a one-mile walk in 19 minutes.

I can get there – in 34 weeks, or mid-June of 2019.

My wife wonders if I will stick with this exercise program long enough to reach that level, putting me on an exercise par with men her age.

“Why, yes, dear; of course I will!” I exclaim.

That is not lying, is it?

Moo-ooo-ooo.

¯¯¯

Denny Bonavita is a former editor and publisher at daily and weekly newspapers in western Pennsylvania. He winters in Apalachicola. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.