The Lawsons did Dallas!

I'm Cool
July 31, 2007

By this afternoon, I was so totally sick of being cooped up in the house. I still didn't feel 100%, but I really had to get out. So right after nap time James and I headed for the YMCA, since that's the only place in Texas that will watch my kid for free. I didn't care if I sat in a shower stall for two hours and listened to the little day-camp girls make armpit farts, I just had to do something.

I dropped James in the kid care center and I was feeling surprisingly good, so I decided to go for the gusto and lift some weights. As I got off the leg press machine, I noticed that the guy with the Penn State tattoo was at the gym today. I've seen him a zillion times, but I have no idea who he is--all I know is that he's not ugly and he does appear to be completely normal.

After my leg presses were finished, ambition got the best of me, and I headed for the most intimidating machine in the joint--the crossover machine. That's a picture of it. Scary, huh?

Just as I went to adjust the settings, I noticed the Penn State tattoo guy standing on the other side. I turned down my Salt n' Peppa, took the headphones out of my ears and asked, "Oh were you gonna us this machine?"

He replied, "Oh no, that's ok. You go first."

I smiled and said "Thanks."

Much to my surprise, the conversation wasn't over. He followed up with, "So, you come here a lot, huh?"

And I thought to myself...'Oh my cow. I think I'm being flirted with. No one has flirted with me since my glory days in '01.'
But I casually said, "About as much as you do I guess."

Then, obviously not realizing that the child on the other side of the plate glass window who was gnawing on the rubber-slice-of-pizza belonged to me, he said something like, "Well I'm glad I finally got an excuse to talk to you. You're getting pretty fast on the treadmill."

Knowing full well that I'm a married woman, I felt completely befuddled and awkward. I thought to myself... 'Dude, you have no freaking clue that the stretch marks on my stomach make me look remarkably similar to a road atlas.' Then I giggled like a schoolgirl, tried to make my 2 inch long pony tail do a sexy little flip, and said, "Oh....thanks....hehehe."

Now here's where it gets interesting. Take a look at that picture up there. If you check out the top right corner you can see a little black rope thing hanging down. Do you see it? Well, those are hand grips and they're interchangeable. Instead of the rope thingy, the machine at the Y had a big metal grip bar attached to it.

Can you see where this is going?

Much to my relief, he turned to walk away. Just as I was about to say something cool like "see you around" I pulled the pin out of the weight stack and the big metal bar came crashing down...right on my big fat head. I'm guessing that the tattoo guy turned around to see what the clanging sound was, but I never looked up so I don't know for sure.

It was one of the more embarrassing moments of this month, but praise the good Lord for cutting that conversation short. Afterall, I'm a happily married woman and I really didn't want to crush that poor man's heart.