July 2018
Turning 62 next month, Carla doesn’t look her age. She does
look good in jeans though. Partially that’s due to the fact that she has both
good jeans, and good genes. She’s fit, strong, and fast. Unlike her spouse, she
never drank, smoked, used illegal substances nor ate an entire turkey and two
whole hams at one sitting after smoking appetite enhancers. (He’s a disgusting
man.)
These days, if she hasn’t worked at the hospital the night
before, she goes to the gym with me in the mornings and runs on the stair
machine like the energizer bunny. Her Fitbit reports that on work nights, she
logs some 14,000 steps per shift. That’s equivalent to 3.3 miles.
Carla is all go, go, go, until she crashes and sleeps for 12
hours straight. She eats the same way, not hungry, no thanks, not now, maybe
later…then it’s 24 hours of Blue Bell Vanilla Chocolate Chip Ice Cream in
gallon containers, and seafood.
Some years ago, Carla was queen of her body pump class.
Skinny and stronger than the average human. I had been doing my thing in the
weight room upstairs, acting all manly and making pig sounds as I threw
dumbbells around with disgust. I decided to humor Carla’s invitation to come to
one of her “lady’s classes”. No big deal, I thought. Give the little ladies a
break.
But it was a big deal, a very big deal. They broke me. Not
only was I humiliated in the class itself, whimpering and crying softly in the
back, I was pretty much paralyzed for a week. Too sore to move a pinkie.
She just laughed at me, no damn sympathy at all.
At 112 pounds, Carla was getting obnoxious, boasting of her
physical prowess, and claiming that she could lift almost anything. I wanted to
call her bluff and allowed, insisted really, that she carry anything heavy that
needed carrying whenever we were together. Six grocery bags at once while I
only carry the car keys. That couch needs to be moved over there? I’ll bet you
can do it by yourself.
I’ll watch.
It became something of a joke between us.
I had a perfect opportunity to dare her to show her stuff
when we went to Home Depot for garden supplies. Heavy bags of top soil and
fertilizer, huge bales of peat moss, 40-pound landscape stones. She piled
everything up on a flat steel dolly. I ambled alongside as she muscled it out
to our truck. Passing people on their way in, most gave me dirty looks while
Carla pushed the dolly, red faced and breathing deeply. We laughed, knowing
that they probably assumed that either I had just undergone a hernia operation,
or more likely, that I was a huge pile of excrement in human form.
When we got to the truck, everything had to be loaded up,
manhandled (woman handled) onto the tailgate and pushed back on the flatbed.
All big, awkward, heavy stuff. I sat on one side of the tailgate just whistling
and looking at the birds, as she wrestled to get each huge thing up and onto
the flatbed.
It seemed like every man that was coming or going in that lot, rushed over
quickly to help Carla, their wives glaring daggers at me. I’d tell them: “Oh,
she’s fine. She can do it. We don’t need help, thanks.” Carla huffing and
puffing, both of us hiding our laughter.
It almost came to blows with one guy, he insisted on helping
until I told him that I was the husband. I guess he figured it was our
business. “Poor woman” he must have thought “why would she stay with a jerk
like that?”
He may have a point, Carla could do better, but it has
nothing to do with her insistence on loading the truck by herself or my true
pleasure in seeing her do it.
hmh
