Hula Hoop

Television displayed young people laughing up a storm with a Hula Hoop. Hula Hoops appeared in the dime store window, at Sears, and even at the grocery store. The Hula Hoop seemed like it would be so much fun, that we begged our parents to buy us one. I don’t know if they were expensive and that’s why we only had one, but each family we knew only had one, too. Our parents probably figured that one was all we needed!

Our parents filmed our first attempts at making the Hula Hoop move. I had hips, but the illusive Hula Hoop fell right off of them the first couple of times that I tried it, until I figured out that if I stopped rotating my hips, it stopped rotating, too. Eventually, I could Hula Hoop endlessly, and then my waist emerged! The hipless boys had much less success with the delusory Hula Hoop, and soon abandoned their efforts to engage in more manly antics.

Next, I conquered the Hula Hoop by rotating it on my neck, and after that, around my knees. I don’t know where we thought that we were going with this skill. Was there a national Hula Hoop contest back then? It seemed like a wonderful aerobic activity to help moms reduce the baby fat around their waists. Did Jack LaLanne engage the Hula Hoop in his daily workout with the women of America?

After I had mastered all the various hooping areas on my body, it was time to try more than one hoop at a time. To make that happen, we invited our friends and neighbors to an afternoon Hula Hoop party in our front yard.

The first round of competition included hooping successively for two minutes around the waist, the neck, the knees, one arm, and one leg. Those who could hoop successfully in those categories moved into the next phase of the competition, multiple hoops.

Multiple hoops turned out to be a bit trickier, since not all the hoops were the same size. I couldn’t wait to try my skill in this event, the first time any of us had used multiple hoops. To this day, I can still remember the pinching sensation around my waist and the red marks around my neck. I managed multiple hoops on my knees, and then fell out of the competition when it came to more than two hoops around a single arm or a single leg.

The competition was a riot! Our parents whooped with laughter from the picnic table as they dispensed Koolaid and oatmeal and raisin cookies to the Hula Hoop ragglings. We all laughed uproariously and either cheered a contestant on, or jeered a contestant until he or she fell apart and collapsed in a pile of giggles on the ground! The film from that afternoon still makes me laugh because our enjoyment was so contagious.

After the first competition, I felt that we would surely have another contest, and so I practiced incessantly for at least a week. Soon, I had to hand over the time for Hula Hoop practice to more serious endeavors as the county fair approached. My brother and I trained our cows to lead properly, constructed rope halters, and completed and filed 4-H reports with the county agents.

We ended the summer by showing our prize-winning cattle at the state fair. The day after the state fair ended, school began. After school the first day, I organized and made room for my books and study materials in my bedroom. I glanced at the Hula Hoop, carried it into the kitchen, and asked my mother, “Where can I put this thing?”

What stories do you remember from your childhood?