After my online yoga class, the swami led us in a meditation for supernatural powers. But so far, the only supernatural thing that has happened is the fact that I chose to participate in a yoga class in the first place.

My treadmill, like most treadmills, has been a de facto hamper for most of its life. When the pandemic first hit, I removed the clothes and hopped on board, only to discover it was broken — broken with an expired warranty — and it was too late to get someone in to fix it, thanks to the shutdown. There had to be some way to move my body and expel some of this tension and stress in my muscles.

My children looked at me with furrowed brows when I yelled out, "Has anyone seen my sneakers?"

"I don't think you have sneakers," my son replied.

"Don't I?"

"I've never seen them," he retorted.

Huh. Maybe I don't own sneakers. Well, that explains a lot about my sedentary life. But not too long afterward, I found an old pair in the bottom of the coat closet.

My husband looked at me with confusion equal to our kids' as I tied the sneakers to my feet and ran out the door.

The most recent time I had gone for a run was before we were married — 12 years ago.

The run was slow and steady. By the end, the pedometer read 1.7 miles. Not too shabby for the first run in over a decade. There had been only one mishap. Just after I ran past the field in my neighborhood, my running shorts — which were purchased during pregnancy, when I thought I might participate in prenatal yoga — fell down around my ankles. It was a miracle, frankly, that I didn't trip over them and land on my face.

This little undergarment glitch happened near the same field where, just days before, I had flashed a family while throwing a boomerang with unusual gusto. Not wearing a bra during the coronavirus pandemic has its perks, but wardrobe malfunctions produce more peril when the sisters go unsupported.

I had wondered why our neighbors, a young family we are friendly with, had not waved back — wondered, that is, until my son told me to put my "boob away."

Exercise and I have had a fraught relationship for a long time, so clearly, between the running in undies and the boomerang-booberang incident, I concluded that exercise in the great outdoors is out of the question.

That is how I began searching for online classes and discovered a yoga meditation that promised supernatural powers. Ideally, my children were going to do the exercises with me — the assumption being that if they exercised with me, they would not be interrupting me. Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. Not interrupt me? How could someone who has kids think such a thing possible? Sadly, the promise of something akin to Spider-Man skills quickly vanished when the chanting was more "aad such, jugaad such" and less "Zap! Zoom! Pow!" The kids left the room and were so eerily quiet that it was hard to concentrate and not wonder what they were destroying in the other room.

When I emerged, my son asked me to levitate something. As if I needed a new way to disappoint my children during this crisis. I was already boiling over in the many ways I disappoint them on a daily basis.

My friends who do not have children suggest I play with the kids for my exercise. Kids exercise naturally all the time, after all. And this is true. But this sudden craving for exercise that is being felt by so many of us confined to our homes does not come from a desire to lose weight or get defined muscles. Though they would be a nice bonus. The need is deeper. It has more to do with escapism — finding a little something for you in a time when so much has been taken away.

I wonder whether screaming into a pillow can be considered a sport.

My friend in Chicago sent me a picture of a man running down her street wearing only headphones, stark-naked. Perhaps that's the answer. It would get me back outside and back to exercising, and I wouldn't have to worry about any potential wardrobe malfunctions.

Katiedid Langrock is author of the book "Stop Farting in the Pyramids," available at http://www.creators.com/books/stop-farting-in-the-pyramids. Like Katiedid Langrock on Facebook, at http://www.facebook.com/katiedidhumor. To find out more about her and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.