It’s an Old Soul, but It’s Got a Young Heart.

Chapter 2. It’s an Old Soul, but It’s Got a Young Heart.

The hoop is an old thing. I mean really old. It’s a circle. The first human invention.  Wall drawings date back to 1000 B.C. of Egyptians playing with hoops which were probably made out of grapevine and stiff grasses.  Hoops are old.  They’ve been around since nearly the dawn of man.  History of hoops and circles is everywhere. The Greeks used trochus, and Native Americans used hoop dances for healing.  In France, the hoop was used in dances to honor Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility.  Australian children used hoops to entertain the Queen. And when British soldiers returned home from war and saw the kids swinging wooden hoops around their hips, the parallels were made between the hula dance, and the hoops. Hooping became known as Hula-Hooping.

But it was Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin, founders of Wham-O who in 1958 reinvented human’s first invention.  Trademarking the Hula Hoop, the age old toy was then marketed and mass produced.  Millions of plastic hollow tubes were sold all over the country.  By 1959, Wham-O sold over a 100 million.

By the 60’s, sales had dropped significantly, and the $1.98 hoop was no longer Wham-O’s #1 seller.

It wasn’t until the 90’s that the hoop was yet again somewhat reinvented.

Part 2

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Every Hoop Has a Beginning, Doesn’t it? part 2

Continued from Part 1 

There was an immediate internal battle when I got my hoop home. The turmoil came when my internal child started arguing with my adulthood, nagging at it to let her play. Come on, come on, come on. Please. Please. Please. Play.

So at first, I started to hoop all shy like. I’d take out my sparkly hula hoop and try to hide it, like hiding a hula hoop is even possible. I didn’t want to be seen as a grown woman playing with a toy. “Is she crazy?” I could hear my neighbors say. “I bet she’s on drugs.”

So in the beginning, I starting hooping in the garage with the garage door shut, in the darkness, so no one could see me, so no one would know what I was doing. And what I was doing was pushing a hula hoop around my hips.  I’d push the hoop, and it’d fall to the ground. I’d pick it back up and push it around again, and again, and again until after an endless amount of trying I finally got this ridiculous flimsy piece of plastic to move around my body in multiple rotations. It was so rewarding. Let me say again, it was so rewarding. I didn’t want to stop moving it. The movement relaxed me and almost hypnotized me. I wanted to giggle, pat myself on the back, and tell everyone about how good hula hooping made me feel.

But no matter how great I felt doing it, I still couldn’t quite get over the fact that I was a grown ass woman hula hooping in my garage. It seemed so ridiculous. I was mortified when my roommate opened the garage door while I was in mid thrust. I felt like someone had caught me cooking up drugs instead of hula hooping.  I felt like I had been caught red handed in the garage and I had no other explanation than just to say, “I’m hula hooping,” and feel like a complete nut job.

But because everyone can acknowledge the fun to be had inside of a hula hoop, effortlessly, that pink hoop would make her appearance at parties and gatherings, much to the amusement of everyone. Everybody would take a turn at center stage on our patio and give the pink hoop a spin. Grown men and women would set down there beers to give the hula hoop a whirl.  And everyone would cheer and applaud and laugh and laugh.

Once, when it was my turn to take center stage, the hoop inevitably dropped from my waist to my knees and then from my knees to my ankles, and my friend said,  “Wow! Where did you learn that? Did you learn that on youtube?”

“Where’d I learn what?” I said as I lost the spin. “What’s on youtube?” I asked.

My mind was about to be blown.

Part 3

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Where you a closet hooper? Are you still?