I had my first aqua aerobics class last night. As I sized up my fellow classmates, I felt pretty smug. "This is going to be easy!" I said to myself. "Obviously, this class is geared toward the ancient and the morbidly obese. I shall breeze through this hour with nary breaking a sweat."

Ha! I was brutally mistaken. True, water helps cushion the joints and is very good for people for whom traditional exercise programs may prove too jarring. And the sadistic pixie who teaches the class recognizes that almost everyone in the class is benefitting merely from suiting up and moving in the water. She allows them to modify movements and exercises that might prove too taxing.

But when she saw me, an evil gleam came to her eye. She showed me no mercy.

I was in her direct line of sight the entire hour. I begged my classmates to switch places with me, but they just laughed at me. Cruel, mocking laughter at my pain. Thus, I learned some things last night:

• Aqua aerobics is much, much harder than it looks;
• If you take a class for less able-bodied folks but are, in fact, able-bodied yourself, the teacher will ride you like a crack whore looking for a fix;
• Don't put yourself in the aerobic instructor's field of vision;
• Some, nay most women, should never appear naked in public;
• Some adolescent boy was mooning people on the basketball court. (I learned that piece of information while I was checking in.)

I will be back. Monday is Deep Water Exercise. I don't give up easily. Even when I wake up in pain in the middle of the night and take Ibuprofen.