Sharla Dawn Gorder

I’ve been thinking about hula hoops—Ha!  Just as I wrote that, a big monarch butterfly landed on my pencil.  I kid you not.  Okay, I guess I’m writing about hula hoops this morning.

I really like the metaphorical admonishment to “stay in your own hula hoop.”  It’s a little more palatable, as advice goes, than “mind your own #$@&%8!  business.”  Plus, it’s playful and fun and goofy, and if I can make meaningful change in my life being playful and fun and goofy, I’ll choose that route any day over serious and tedious and punitive.

I was never any good at hula hooping, even as a kid. I could never sustain the rhythmic movement over time, and the thing would be clattering onto the driveway at my feet after a dozen or so wobbly revolutions.  But, as a kid, I was still okay doing stuff I wasn’t especially good at because, just because, it was fun.  (I’m trying to recapture that mindset now that I’m all growed up.)  So, I hula hooped (and pogo-sticked, and rope-jumped) to my heart’s content.

My friend Mary Ellen, could hula hoop for hours on end hardly appearing to move at all.  She’d position the thing around her waist with her left hand, give it a single push with her right, and round it would go, a pale pink blur bisecting her torso in a neat straight line.  She’d walk around like that—up and down the driveway chattering about the new boy in school, or the kitten she had found under her house.  I’d usually bounce along next to her on my pogo stick.

When it was my turn for the hula hoop, it wasn’t so pretty (but I must point out, still fun).  I’d get the thing around my waist, give it a spin, and then start gyrating madly—no discreet little hip undulations like Mary Ellen, oh no, nuh-uh.  I’d buck forward and back, side to side, up and down, trying to keep that thing spinning—as the plastic circle gradually inched lower and lower on my body.  And the lower it got, the more frantic and exaggerated my movements would become.

Give me back my pogo stick!  I was good at that.  Relentless, nuance-less, graceless pounding on the concrete was my forte.  The insides of both of my knees were black with bruises.  I counted more than three thousand bounces once.  That’s how good I was at slamming myself repeatedly against the ground.  Ha!  And I admit, I was secretly pleased to see that Mary Ellen sucked a pogo-sticking as much as I sucked at hula hooping.

Still, we dutifully took turns—and then went to climb the tree in her back yard when we got bored.

I have tried hula hooping many times as an adult—still not great at it, but I can manage to stay in my hoop for a minute or so.  And I still look ridiculous doing it.  And it’s still a little fun. When a friend recently shared that she had been having trouble lately staying in her own hula hoop, I had to laugh.  The image of me trying to manage my own hoop is ridiculous enough.  What must it look like when I try to get into someone else’s?

When a friend recently shared that she had been having trouble lately staying in her own hula hoop, I had to laugh.  The image of me trying to manage my own hoop is ridiculous enough.  What must it look like when I try to get into someone else’s?

When I picture myself trying to climb into, say, Taylor’s hula hoop to give him relationship advice, the image of me gyrating and bucking is such close proximity to my 20-year-old son is not only absurd—but a little disturbing. Trying to manipulate my way into Ted’s hoop over the mess in the garage and deck doesn’t play out well either—as it should be clear by now—I’ve got my own hoop to master and he knows it.

Even trying to help a new friend with addiction issues—a hoop I’ve been invited by her to consider—doesn’t grant me license to invade her circle and take over.  Her hoop is barely spinning.  It may have to crash to the concrete before she can pick up and learn a new way to revolve.  The best I can do is fumble along beside her in my own goofy hoop, and be there when it falls.

I spent the better part of the week practicing.  Nah, I didn’t go out and buy a shiny new hula hoop (though, come to think of it, maybe I will!). No, I practiced talking to myself before I opened my mouth to talk to others.

And more often than not, I found myself listening more than advising, as I said to myself over and over—

Not my hoop.