Kept 'pensioners'? It is the best wrong word in the sentence, and the class really is for them, but the five already says who runs it and what it is. Kept 'Milwaukee'? A place is the first thing to go when five words have to carry what happened. Kept '82-year-old' or 'trained'? That is the handover, which is a story about the winter rather than about him.
This one really happened. Dick Knepper was born in 1928 and lives in Bay View, on the south side of Milwaukee. He was in his seventies when he typed up a simple weights programme for other older people, and it has run ever since at the Bay View Community Center on Monday and Thursday afternoons, under the name he gave it, Dumbbells for Seniors. He is 97 now and still takes the class himself. Asked his age, he said, 'I'm 39 years old.' He goes to Florida for the winter, so he has taught Marcelina Agbuis, who is 82 and did not want to stand up in front of people, to take it while he is away. She has his plan typed out in front of her.
Every word, accounted for
EveryA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
MondayGoes with Thursday. When it happens, which is not what happened.
andA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
ThursdayThe other afternoon. A timetable is not news.
aA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
97-year-oldHis age, and the reason anybody wrote this down at all.
inA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
MilwaukeeWhere. A place is the first thing a sub-editor scores through.
stillAt ninety-seven. Take this word out and he is only a man who once started something.
runsHe is not a name over the door. He turns up and takes it.
theA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
weightsDumbbells, not chairs and stretching. It matters that it is weights.
classThe thing itself: a room, a timetable, other people in it.
heA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
wroteHe did write it, in his seventies. That is where it started, not what he does now.
forA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
pensionersWho it is for, and the strongest wrong word here. The five already says who runs it.
andA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
anA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
82-year-oldThe woman taking it on, and a very good number. Not the one this is about.
heA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
trainedWhat he did for her. True, and it is the handover rather than the class.
takesHers, from the winter. His is the verb in the answer.
overGoes with takes.
thisA little word. It only holds the sentence together.
winterWhen she starts. A date.