American Thighs (7 page)

A
s most of you probably already know, I answer all my own e-mails—love getting them from y'all, love writing back—but I got one this morning that I swear I will frame and hang on my office wall until the end of my days. It will make me happy every time I read it, which I will do several times daily, I'm sure.

Queen L wrote to confess that she had been brought to the painful realization that she was utterly failing at living up to the Sweet Potato Queen Standard of Living and, oh, she was suffering mightily from that shortcoming.

The first problem area, she felt, was her part-time work as a personal trainer, which was causing her to work out vigorously every day of her life. Although she swore she was consuming
foods from both the Sweet and the Salty groups, as a vegetarian, she avoided altogether the Frieds and Au Gratins.

Okay, now I'm paying attention to her but I'm thinking the whole time that I myownself have BEEN a personal trainer and I know perfectly well that it is totally possible to instruct the CLIENT in correct form and what not—without exerting onesownself in the slightest, if one was of a mind to, as I frequently was. And since when does being a vegetarian preclude Fried? Hello? Tempura veggies? And why no cheese? Who can resist the Laughing Cow? She's so happy about her cheese and all—always makes ME wanna join in.

But anyway, Queen L went on to say that, as a vegetarian, her fiber intake level was nearly perfect, of which she was dangerously proud, if you ask me—AND that her “tight little butt” fit oh, so nicely into her SIZE 2 SHORTS. “For years now, I have been under the false illusion that all of this was a thing to be proud of.” Her words, certainly not mine, as you should well know.

Size 2, my hind leg. Oh, she was a proud one, all right—and you KNOW what They say about pride—and where it comes, in relation to destruction. Uh-huh. Little Miss Tiny 2 done been struck down and laid low by a BAD case of hemorrhoids. (My tendency would naturally be to put whatever her affliction was in ALL CAPS, for emphasis, but that particular word is just so creepy to me, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm sure you agree.)

Anyway, her Problem was apparently severe enough to warrant a visit to the doctor—perish THAT thought; I cannot think of anything MORE undignified, nor, I'm sure, can she, which tells us this was BAD because she did willingly take her tiny hiney in there and submitted it to the revolting examination. The doctor pointed out that “although her water, fiber, weight, and exercise frequency were IDEAL (which she did love hearing), he went on to indicate that she was probably aggravating the veins in her leetle bitty rectum (file that one with hemorrhoid) by too much heavy lifting and too many squats.

PLUS, she was sitting up too straight.

Okay. Bless her heart, even if it is a size 2. She has just been told that everything she'd been working her butt literally OFF for was what was causing her such major grief in her nether regions. She was obviously shattered by the experience and I can certainly sympathize with a dash of empathy. After all, I have, with great frequency and a fair amount of regularity, been told that everything I was doing was wrong—just not ever, specifically, that I was exercising too much and not eating enough fat.

The doctor advised her to alter her perfect posture in such a way as to kind of tuck her itsy-bitsy butt cheeks under her a bit, so as to sort of “push” the little roids back up in yonder. To her horror, she discovered that, due to the inordinate number of squats she had been performing weekly, what passed for “butt cheeks” on the reverse side of her size 2 body were too small and too tight to be “tucked” anywhere.

Now, HERE'S something. Can you imagine being faced with such a thorny dilemma? That your BUTT is just TOO DAMN SMALL to enable you to even SIT on it in such a way that did not further extrude your extrusionary problem? I can imagine my butt being too big to fit in a big ole La-Z-Boy—but too small to sit on? Nah. I get no mental picture of that at all—it's a blank, total blank. If a whole bunch of y'all have also actually experienced this Too Tiny Butt Syndrome, I beg of you, please do NOT write to tell me about it—unless, of course, you are, like our Queen L, REPENTING of all your past behavior that caused this consequence to be visited upon you.

She found that the only way she could comfortably sit, without aggravating her “little friends,” was to wedge her little weenie ass up in the corner of a couch, in a kind of half-reclined position. A week spent so wedged, with all her various creams, salves, suppositories, and soothing unguents close at hand, gave her plenty of time to reflect on her many transgressions and she has vowed to change and she believes that, with a great deal of grit and determination—along with help from the SPQ™ Sisterhood—she CAN CHANGE! YES, SHE CAN! YES! SHE CAN!

Queen L has suffered but she has seen the Light, and not only is she truly remorseful and willing to amend her ways to more truly reflect her Queenly Transformation—she is willing to share her story, her humiliation, and her pain—with all of us—so that, God willing, her experience, strength, and hope will light the Way for others suffering amongst us “who may
still have the belief that there is value in working out, eating right, and staying skinny.”

I was nearly weeping with joy by the time I finished reading that e-mail, and when I came to her closing, where she asked us to “please pass the cheese fries,” I admit—I broke down. It's a MIRACLE—HALLELUJAH! SHE'S BEEN HEALED!

Is There a Cute Doctor in the House?

It was a good day for e-mails, I gotta tell you! Right after I finished rolling on the floor over Little L's Tiny Whiney Hiney—I opened a similarly pleasant missive from Queen S, who wrote to say that she had gotten herself so “mature” and also so “thick around the middle” that she found herself with just the slightest touch of the di-bee-tees. Apparently, it was enough of a touch to warrant the issuance and wearing of an official piece of joo-ry that would, in case of a falling-out on her part, alert the appropriate persons that she was, in fact, a card-carrying diabetic.

Of course, she got a 14-karat-gold MedicAlert bracelet—I mean, it's something she's got to wear, like, ALL the TIME—so naturally, it needs to be fine. She was delighted to learn that her new bracelet provided for ten full lines of engraving and that since, so far, she happily only has that one little health issue to declare—after listing “Queen S” and “diabetic,” she still had a
whole nine and a half lines with which to convey other equally important facts about herself to anyone who might come across her in a coma or other distressful situation.

So far, on her bracelet, she has “Queen S. Diabetic. Crazy Funny. Really Cool. Always up for a Good Time. NOT FAKING—I'M SICK! Clean Undies on When I Started out Today. Get Me a Private Room. Don't Just Stand There—PRAY FOR ME!”

But she still has a little room so she's thinking of adding “Leave My Jewelry and Makeup On.” Her children, of course, think she is insane and also trying to boss the medical team, even if she happens to be unconscious. I fail to grasp their point.

Queen S just wants the EMTs to know her feelings about certain pertinent issues, in the event that she is temporarily incapable of communicating those feelings verbally. And also, if possible, through that illuminating peek into her heart and mind, to inspire the health-care workers to treat her as they would their very own crazy mama.

A
gaggle of us used to loudly occupy the third-base bleachers on hot summer afternoons at Smith-Wills Stadium for the old Jackson Mets baseball games—back when Mookie Wilson and Keith Bodie were on our team. Afternoon baseball games met many of our needs then. We could get some sun—which helped us in the furtherance of our quest for golden-brown deliciousness. We could drink beer and eat crap—always entertaining for reasons obvious to like-minded individuals. We could go to the bathroom and/or concession stands at will and often without fear of “missing something” in the game itself. (Baseball is so slow, you can literally leave for hours at a stretch and pick it right back up where you left off upon your return. Baseball is like a soap opera for guys—they can walk away from it for twenty years then turn it back on and be totally caught up in one episode.) And, of course, there were the hot guys.

All the guys were hot, of course; it was summer in Mississippi—everybody was hot—but some of them were also “hot.” Some of them were on the field, some of them were in the stands, usually not too far from us—because, due to our golden-brown-and-delicious imperative, we were most often scantily clad, which upped our curb appeal considerably.

The guys in the stands would sometimes pretend to be actually watching the game, and when they did, they would frequently, as guys are wont to do, holler at the other guys—the ones who were out there actually PLAYING the game—an assortment of somewhat predictable phrases designed to advise, encourage, inflame, and/or belittle and otherwise denigrate them publicly.

One of the most oft-used buzzwords was “GOOD EYE!” which would be shouted at the batter when he would decline to swing at a particular pitch, deemed by my esteemed and usually inebriated male colleagues to be “crap.” Occasionally, the umpire would concur with this evaluation and indicate his agreement by signaling “Ball.” This concordance with the ump was rare, of course, because for some reason, if one is at all convinced by the plethora of epithets customarily hurled at them by even the most normally mild-mannered of fans, the world of baseball has apparently become a safe haven and source of steady employment for scurrilous, underhanded, dim-witted, and, oddly enough, severely visually impaired individuals who have somehow become immovably embedded in the infra
structure of the game on a worldwide level and have, for reasons best known to themselves, dedicated their very lives to Ruining the Game for Everybody Else—so anytime the ratbastard ump would happen to make a call with which the beer-soaked gang agreed, such a rare call would bring forth a frenzy of “GOOD EYEs!” for him, too, but he would ignore them, just as he most often did the tremendous volume of less-than-complimentary taunts flung his way during the course of a normal game.

We, the female contingent of the third-base bleacher bums, had not spent the preceding years of our respective youths playing or watching endless hours of baseball, so we weren't really up on all the lingo associated with the game. There were, of course, the occasional Moms with Sons over there in the good seats (the ones with backs) behind home plate. As part of the penalty for having produced more penis-bearing people for the planet, for many years their lives had been not so much more than just so many interminable chains of T-ball, Little League, and whatever comes after that, so THEY HAD spent many, many endless hours watching baseball, and thus they were likely to be quite conversant in the lexicon of the game, but we were still young, childless, and blissfully ignorant of, well, pretty much everything. Baseball and all its culture was only one small and comparatively unimportant entry on the very long list of shit we didn't know diddly about.

But we have never been accused of allowing our state of being uninformed on a particular subject to interfere with our enthusiasm for it, especially if it in any way involved hot guys. We were there, soaking up rays, refreshing summer beverages, and admiring glances—we were happy, we knew it, and we clapped our hands. But we were also anxious to participate verbally whenever possible even though we weren't quite sure what sapient contributions we should shout or when the appropriate time for such cheers and jeers might occur. We instinctively knew that “BINGO!” while admittedly one of our very favorite words to yell in any crowd, would not serve us well in this environment.

We made a cursory attempt at correlating, in our minds, the various incomprehensible phrases our guy friends were yelling with the events that were unfolding on the field before us at a snail's pace, but we soon lost interest since it clearly was not about US in any remote way. But we heard the “good eye” thing so many times during this one particularly boring game, it caught our attention, and so whenever we heard it, we would focus our gaze intently on the player at whom it seemed to be directed, in order to make our own eye-assessment of the individual.

It didn't take us but a second to determine that from our vantage point in the third-base bleachers, one could not actually SEE the EYES of anybody on the field, player or otherwise,
and so, until we could examine them closely for ourselves, we were not prepared to be hollering out our endorsement of them for all to hear.

During the course of coming to this conclusion, however, we did make a very important observation that I'm sure, once shared, will improve the viewing prospect for all future baseball games for women everywhere: some guys do manage to look really good in a baseball uniform. Mookie Wilson and Keith Bodie were two such guys. This seemingly small, but for us salient, point just changed the whole game for us.

With at least one of them destined to become a superstar of the game, they were immediately seen as stellar in our sight for reasons that had little to do with their admittedly outstanding performances regularly delivered during the course of the games. As a result of our newfound and heartfelt appreciation for their appearance in their little baseball outfits, we quickly worked out our own personal set of cheers reserved especially for these, our two favorite Mets.

“MOO-OO-OO-OOKIE! MOOKIE! MOOK! MOOK! MOOK!” was pretty fun to yell, no matter what he happened to be doing at the time. “Keith Bodie” did not exactly lend itself with the same phonetic ease as did “Mookie” to the creation of a catchy one-liner, but we did come up with one that made us, and, we like to think, him, happy as well. Whenever he came up to bat, we could be counted on for a rousing round of “HIT 'EM IN THE TEETH, KEITH!”

But our favorite all-purpose cheer—the one that we could, did, and still do enthusiastically employ whenever a qualified candidate pops up on the field—evolved out of that initial realization that there are, happily, some guys who do look hot in a baseball uniform.

Rhyming as it does with that one phrase so overworked by the guy part of the crowd, you can really feel free to let loose with it just about anytime during the course of the game, confident that the untrained guy-ears in your vicinity will not discern the difference between their shouts of “GOOD EYE!” and your own of “GOOD THIGHS!” It'll change how you feel about baseball, I promise. O-o-o-o-oh, hunny, YES, do take me out to that ball game!

Trolling

Sigh. At one time, that term meant that our jeans were tight ON PURPOSE and we LIKED 'em that way—wouldn't have 'em any OTHER way and they didn't seem at all uncomfortable, which is so incomprehensible now. It meant staying not just up but out until it was time for breakfast—and thinking it was just sooo much FUN. The only way we would do that today is if we were sitting by somebody's deathbed, and even so, it would have to be the deathbed of somebody we either liked a whole lot or from whom we anticipated inheriting a massive fortune—
which would, of course, qualify them for a top spot in the first category.

For some of us, it often meant smoking cigarettes, and for others, perhaps, on occasion, there was even the inhalation of assorted other combustibles. It almost always meant the consumption of adult beverages, even though it might be a few years until the law would consider us adults and decades before our mothers would. Occasionally, it meant that considerably more than the minimum daily requirement of alcohol would be consumed, but we were going to sleep all day the next day anyway so that hardly mattered.

I don't think DUIs were even invented until around 2003—you never heard of anybody getting a ticket much less hauled off to jail. (I can't imagine why it took so long for this law to be enforced—were they waiting to reach a certain body count or what?)

It definitely meant talking to strangers. This was actually our target demographic—I mean, why would we want to talk to people we already knew? We already KNEW them and had apparently rejected them—otherwise we would be out on a date with them instead of out trolling, right? Duh.

Trolling was pretty much a catchall word for going out to do as many things our mothers had told us repeatedly NOT to do as we could possibly squeeze into an evening. It is a wonder any of us are alive to testify to this. I am sure there are droves of Larva (persons under the age of forty) who are still out there
actively engaging in at-risk behaviors—and they (not unlike us) think that the MAIN, if not the only, thing they are risking is the ire and/or heart health of their mamas. The ones who do survive (like us) will live to shudder at the memories of the risks they took—but that's many years and many risks away now.

For those of us who have survived the bankrupting of our youths, trolling has taken on a different meaning—although it, too, is not altogether danger-free. Today, it means our pants are baggy enough to be entirely comfy and they may even expose our knee-bags. It means, if we are wearing them at all, our shoes are like treasured old friends—no longer particularly attractive but delightful to be with, even for long periods of time.

For some, it could mean leaving the house BEFORE breakfast—but those are not my people. It does happen, I'm told, but I'm not around for it. Likewise, for some, it still involves high blood-alcohol ratios, but again, not for me, thank you very much. I haven't had a hangover in what, thirty years?—and don't feel the least bit nostalgic about any of 'em.

Since today's trolling timetable has been reversed, your excursion should involve a hat and massive amounts of sunscreen or soon your skin will look ju-u-u-st like those comfy shoes of yours. The chances of coming home with MULTIPLE KEEPERS are greatly enhanced today—because today, when we go trolling—we are fishing—like, for fish—in, say, the lake, for instance.

I myownself love to fish. I find the mindless repetitive hand
motions to be very like those involved in smoking, which I never failed to enjoy, back in the day. I have never missed the way cigarettes made me feel but I have grieved the loss of all that hand-fiddling connected with the activity. Of course, it did make us look soooo grown up—in a way that fishing never will—but you do cross That Line with smoking.

You must know the one. You need to know the one before you settle comfortably into the addiction phase—which will cease to be comfy at all when quitting time comes. And of course, it MUST come. I'm not even talking about all the effects on your body, inside and out—first graders know this—it's not news to you. What I'm talking about is That Line. One day, you are a cute young thing, looking so faux-sophisticated with her ciggy, and BOOM!—the next day, you are “that old lady smoking.”

Believe me, you will BE “that old lady smoking” to other (younger) people about twenty to twenty-five YEARS—BEFORE—YOU think you look the least bit old-ladyish.

But anyway, I find the rhythm of the constant hand motions of fishing to be quite soothing, and now that we live thirty feet away from a large lake, I can soothe myself at will. Well, I can actually indulge in this particular form of self-soothing only when either The Cutest Boy in the World or my neighbor Angie is at home. As much as I love to fish, I gotta tell you, there is a great divide between what's known as “fishing” and what's known as “catching.” I need one or the other of them to be handy in case I should catch something—which is quite often
actually—fish happen to like me. The reason I restrict my fishing to the times when Kyle and/or Angie can be quickly summoned to my side is that although I do love to fish and particularly to catch—SOMEBODY'S got to take 'em off the hook besides me.

Oh, I don't mind touching the fish, not at all—I even kiss all the ones I throw back, which is most of 'em. No tongue or anything, but I do give 'em a little peck on the lips. The fish I'm fine with, but somebody else has to free my fish on account of I cannot be trusted to NOT impale myself on even the simplest, most basic fishhook. My limitations are many, and I acknowledge them all—this is one of them—I've come to terms with it.

My other neighbor, Laura, is an equally large Girl when it comes to this so I don't feel too bad, but in a pinch, even me and my fellow wimp-ass, Laura, can be counted on to man up, which is a source of comfort to Kyle and Angie, I'm sure.

One afternoon, Angie and I were fishing from my seawall. Kyle was in New York for some forgotten and for the sake of this story unimportant reason and Laura was sitting on her own back porch, enjoying a little of what we call “Laura Fest,” meaning she wasn't doing jack shit and she was loving it.

Simultaneously, Kyle called on my cell phone and Angie hooked something BIG. I was feigning interest in whatever Big News Kyle had called to share as I watched Angie's line being stripped out, miles at a time. There was something BIG on the end of that line.

Kyle nattered on for some minutes as I “uh-huhed” enough that he apparently thought I was (a) listening and/or (b) interested, until finally I could stand it no more. The whine of her reel as the line was stripping off was driving me wild. Angie looked at me and mouthed, “Net,” meaning whatever it was, we were gonna need the net to land it.