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Addict
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: TX
Gender: Female
Posts: 126
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My Friend Vic: Further Proof Exercise is Stupid
My friend Vic is funny--his wife (my number one sista) , smuggles his writings and sends them to her circle of friends. He writes just to get it out of his head and doesn't think anyone would want to read what passes through his brain. I thought this was a laugh out loud story. I think he has a John Irving type of voice and have accused her of marrying Garp on more than one occasion. Hope ya'll enjoy a trip in to Texas.
Further Proof Exercise is Stupid
I bought Ezekiel a little bike a year and a half ago. I’m always a little early on the physical stuff, thus terrifying them when they are too young, but you gotta be tough kid. Gotta be tough. So they limp away injured with “blood” pouring out of some microscopic leak in their hands or fingers or armpits and often acquired from a red marker and “Daddy, I think I need a Baind Aid.” For some reason, and this makes me jealous, a “bained aid” seems to cure everything where mere spittle from Mommy seems to come up a loooonnnngg way short. I’m sorry did I get away from the major thrust of this story? Lemme recoup, umm bike, little boys, oh yes.
The only thing that has a place in the garage is this little bike, which goes on a hook and hangs from the ceiling. Everything else is in an obvious state of neglect and despair, which causes us all trauma when we peer in, so we don’t, and have lately even begun leaving things strewn about the yard, hence causing trepidation amongst our neighbors. If you’re wondering, once upon a time I read a sentence by the author of “Typhoon” and “Heart of Darkness, Mr. Joseph Conrad, thank you very much, which went on for so long that it eventually wound up being an entire paragraph or half a page in that particular story, sadly though, I have never quite been able to match that feat, and I certainly liked writing in this program until I discovered, quite by accident really, that if you make a small sentence, or a fragment, the program is quick to underline it, thus making you look like an idiot. Lousy, stinking…. Well maybe. I guess I’ll have to show you when I do it. Anyway where was I. Oh yes, little blue bike.
Well, recently the weather improved so we got the bike out and wouldn’t you know, either it shrunk, from being surrounded by dingy neighbors, chaos, disarray, heartache and broken dreams or the boys grew. Of the two, I believe the latter, lousy damned green line. I can’t create in this environment. I can’t grow! Free, Free, I long to be free! Oh yes, blue bike. Sorry.
Being that it’s been hanging upside down, staring down at it’s lowly neighbors, dust, concrete, dirty carpet, leaves, pecan nuts in sacks, humus, and other detritus it’s been at an elevated pier, thus elevating it above it’s peers and it hasn’t suffered the same dirty fate as the more common, floor lying objects. It’s shiny! Twinkly! Like a girl you might meet in a club. “Gennelmen put yer hands together for Twinkly on the center stage.” Jack commandeered the silly thing and after a day or two he is feeling his oats, small though his oat-maker may be, and he’s barreling up and down the sidewalk, slamming on the coaster brake to make skid marks on the sidewalk. Which cause more concern, no doubt, to the neighbors. On that shiny day, I decided to get on my bike. This is the previously introduced $6 garage sale bike. (Later I went to Wal-Mart and found a seat. The seat was $9. Does it make sense to put a nine dollar seat on a six dollar bike? I think not which forces me to endure the ass injuring free seat.) So with calluses building like duplexes in the spring I set off in search of Jack.
Jack wanted to go “for a block” which in boy talk means, around the block. Off we went. His steed has training wheels which makes it hard to get over bumps, boxes, bric-a-brac, small children and sisters in coupes. So in Lubbock “More car commercials per hour than any other city!” Texas, he has to stop at the entrance to every alley and every curb across every street, thus making progress slow at best. Eventually I start riding beside him, because, I feel my oatmaker getting jammed up into my navel, and helping him by pushing on his back, get over some of the smaller bumps. This, of course, involves some skill, because the sidewalks are narrow here in Lubbock, “Buy a new SUV you cheap bastard” Texas. I have a few close calls but am feeling pretty confident, all in all. It’s more a challenge to stay upright going so slow than to actually push him. On the relatively long stretches he can really get up a good head of steam, so that’s like cruising. Then we stop.
It’s been raining down here, wettest damn drought I’ve ever seen, in Lubbock, “Why don’t ya buy a new truck to haul your fat ass to the gym,” Texas. So there’s dried mud at the crossing of every alley and at one point I try to bunny hop the bike over some mud. Did you know that you can’t really bunny hop a mountain bike? Where are banana seats and monkey bar handlebars when I need them? Jack is ahead of me now and I wonder if I can pop a wheelie on it? I give it a little pull up and nothing really happens. So I gear the bike lower and really shove that right foot down, while simultaneously jerking on the bars and WOO HOO! NOW WE GOT’S US A RODEO COWBOYS! Up comes the front wheel, down goes the right pedal, STRAIGHT OUT LIKE ELVIS SHOOTING FOR A HAMBURGER GOES MY LEFT FOOT! Damn Daniel Day Lewis movie. My left leg apparently has an agenda and needs to be somewhere else RIGHT NOW! It shoots forward so fast I hear a tiny sonic boom. Wee haa boys, I don’t think I’m gonna make the buzzer. Nope, I’m on the ground. Luckily I have my fat ass to catch me and cushion the fall and the derision and milk snot of the drivers-by on a busy street to keep me in warm memories for years to come. I suspect the sight of a bald man trying to ride a wheelie and falling and hurting himself was probably told around the sacks and buckets of take-out food throughout the neighborhood that evening.
The worst part is Jack is oblivious up in front and I swear to you, I broke my knee, my ankle and my foot. Perhaps that explains the popping sound and the sickening tearing I heard and felt? So I call to him in that monochromatic, monosyllabic tone I use just for special occasions. “Jack, Jack, come back. Daddy hurt himself.” I knew I was screwed. Already I was wondering how he could get across the street by himself, what he would tell Mommy? Was she giving Emma a bath? What would I tell a passer by if they stopped to help here in Lubbock, “Well, why weren’t you driving a new car and where do you go to church?” Texas? I wonder if I can crawl the half block if need be?
Luckily, by leaning heavily on the bike, I am able to remount and despite the handlebars being slightly askew, I am able to ride the remaining distance home. I can step off the bike and I tell my wife that I have “Really messed up my leg.”
“What did you do?” she wonders with grave concern.
“Well, I was ummm. Popping a wheelie.”
Despite the fact that I spent the next day at home with an ice pack on my foot, this was a major conversation piece among her girlfriends for a couple of days. Am I going through a mid-life crisis they wonder? I don’t think so but where is my Corvette and Learjet?
This is the same damn injury that I had as a sophomore in high school. Porter Smith and I sprained our feet concurrently that year. So if he wasn’t hauling my books, I was hauling his. He stepped off the tailgate of an El Camino. I stepped off a curb. I am glad to say though, that despite the black and blue and swelling of my otherwise, oh so attractive foot, I am able to heal faster now than then. Apparently the psychic networks thing really paid off because I am big into psychic healing. “It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, ugg DON’T TOUCH THE DAMN THING!, ugggg, It doesn’t hurt.”
“Well boys, how was your childhood? Lots of fighting, falling off roofs, and crazy injuries?”
“Sure, some. Mostly our Dad. He was fun, but gooness the times we had to go to the hospital in Lubbock, “Lawd you need a new truck”, Texas.”
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