Beach Bumming

I grew up going to the beach almost every Sunday. My family lived about a half hour away from the closest beach, and we would make a day of it, whether we all wanted to or not. The day involved a lot of sweating, a bite or two of a sandy hot peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a few pees in the ocean, and a hunt for sharks’ teeth before the sunburn claimed our tender young skin. We would swing by Dunkin Donuts on the way home, which my sisters and I would consume in front of the Wonderful World of Disney, post-bath, in our matching summer pajamas.

My beach experiences as an adult are very different from that of my childhood.  My husband got a steal on a tiny condo at a foreclosure auction, and we stay there several times a year.  The condo is in the same building we have been going to since we met, which means I have been going to the same beach for my entire adult life. While I still enjoy a good pee in the ocean, I don’t have to eat a sandy sandwich anymore. I don’t have to peel my sweaty legs off a burning pleather car seat.  If I get hot, I can take a break in the ocean, or in the pool, or in the sweet, sweet air conditioning of the condo while catching up on my Food Network or SpongeBob viewing.  And unlike my childhood, when I didn’t go back to the next Sunday, I can get up and go again and sit with a book day after day until my husband has to go back to work or my kids to school or I just get tired of relaxing. That usually takes about a week.

My point is, I am pretty much an expert at the beach. I have achieved master beach level. 

Lately, I have witnessed some inappropriate beach behavior, bad beach etiquette if you will, and I feel the need to share it. Obviously, none of these faux pas were committed by you, but perhaps by someone you know. Not every beach has lifeguards or other authority figures ensuring public safety, so it’s up to all of us to do the right thing. Here’s just a few, but by no means all:

·        Stop it with leaving your tent on the beach overnight. When you rent a condo, you aren’t also guaranteed a prime location on the beach. Unless you are at a resort and have reserved a cabana, you don’t get your own personal square of sand. The beach is public and first-come, first-serve.  You people who leave your tent up for a week, you are the very reason most beach towns have outlawed the practice. Luckily, our condo is in a county that still allows tent use in the summer because we own such a tent. It weighs about seventy five pounds. Every morning, my husband hikes through the dune path with that thing on his back, and we all help set it up so he can sit and rest his hernia. When our day on the beach is done, we help him close it and position it just so on his back before he treks it up to our condo. The tent isn’t in the same spot every day because we don’t own the beach, and neither do you, tent asshat. Why don’t you try a little motherfucking courtesy next time?

 

·       Let’s talk about music for a minute. You think the music you like is the best, don’t you? I am a big fan of alternative. I have a friend who would rather listen to heavy metal. His music aggravates my TMJ, and mine makes him start his period. We both can agree on one thing: we hate country.  Why is it that the country music fans always set up their beach party right next to mine? I don’t want to listen to some pseudo cowboy singing about drinking beer while I watch you down a suitcase of Milwaukee’s Best, which, by the way, isn’t good for you. Alcohol dehydrates you, idiot, and drinking more of it isn’t topping off your fluids. Too much beer is not a good reason to crank up the twang; there is no good reason. When I go to the beach, I want to hear the waves crashing on the shore. I want to hear the birds squawking at each other over an old crab leg. I might even like to hear a giggle or two coming from a sand castle construction site. What I don’t want to hear is some off key yokel warbling about Jesus loving your gun toting dog in the back of your honky tonk pick-up truck with your toothless one night stand. You are not in your double wide, so turn it the fuck down.

·       Let’s try to secure our belongings, shall we? I try to be a nice person, but after running after your Tommy Bahama umbrella and your five thousand empty Capri Suns that got picked up by a breeze, I am over you. If I get hit one more time by your wayward raft, I will claim it for my own. If you want to leave your Cheetos bags all over the place, at least have enough to share with the rest of us. Furthermore, the dunes are not your storage bin. They are, however, federally protected land that may just help our children still have beaches when they have children. Let’s stop putting that stack of beach chairs on the sea oats. You can tote them back to your car or condo at the end of the day along with that tent you leave up. Jesus, you sure are lazy.  

·       I shouldn’t even have to say this, but the sand on the beach is not your goddamned ash tray. I want to look for shark’s teeth without picking through the butts of your cancer sticks. It’s just gross. Put them in one of the plethora of beer cans you have scattered under your beach tent that you are leaving up all week. You are such a dick.

·       A friend of mine posted a photo on Facebook last week of some douchebag who was surf fishing in the middle of the day. Noon o’clock isn’t exactly when the fish are biting, if you know what I’m saying. You know what’s happening at noon? Families. Children are boogie boarding. Teenagers are losing their bikini bottoms while jumping over waves. Large older women are trying to enjoy their romance novels in their sand chairs while the waves lap at their toes. None of them is prepared for an ER visit to remove your old rusty fish hook. How’s about instead you fish during regular fishing hours, you know, when no one else is using the beach and the fish are actually biting. There is something that has been biting a lot lately in the middle of the day, and that’s sharks. In the past few months, over eighteen shark attacks have occurred within a hundred miles of where my condo is, during the day, in the surf, not even deep water. The sharks are there because it’s their home. Could you do us all a favor and not invite them in closer for a snack?

The last time I was at the beach, I saw one of those surf fishing assholes, and I got really irritated. I sat there under my tent, watching him cast his line and slowly reel it back, while all around him, children played along the water’s edge. I sat there in my chair and got pissed. PISSED. I went on and on to my bored daughter about how dangerous it is to surf fish with the hooks and the sharks and all, getting angrier and angrier, when all of a sudden, he got a bite! He turned that little crank thing that winds up the fishing line and pulled and turned and pulled and turned until finally, he reeled in his catch. A baby shark. My daughter and I, mid-judgment, hopped up out of our chairs and ran to the small group who surrounded him so we too could see the baby shark. It looked so cute and angry, like a baby alligator, only, you know, more sharky. I even got a picture of my daughter holding it. We headed back to our tent and chairs while the fisherman flung the shark in the water, not quite past the breakers.

That was cool, my daughter said.

Yeah, it was. Also stupid, I said to her. Asshole fisherman.

The beach is perfect as it is. You can’t improve on it, but you can ruin it for everyone else. Try to remember that you aren’t the king of the beach any more than you are the center of the universe, so let’s aim to leave our narcissism at home and instead bring along a little common sense and decency.

And if I see you again, man who surf fished from the safety of your tent while blaring your effing country crap on your knock-off Beats speaker, I will beat you to death with your beer bottles and bait, and that’s a promise. Unless, you catch a shark, or maybe a ray, because I like those too.

Run for Your Life

Last summer, my older daughter E began training for the high school cross country team.  It didn’t really involve me much, so I didn’t mind. I didn’t have to drive her often, and since the season had not officially commenced, I didn’t have to sit through races or relays or meets or whatever it's called when cross country teams compete against each other.  She carpooled most mornings with a generous mom in the neighborhood who liked to get her morning run in while the team ran their designated course or did their conditioning, which mostly involved lots of crunches and planks on old beach towels in the parking lot. The park did feature a sexual deviant who hung out in his car and watched until some vigilant parents alerted the authorities, but he never really interacted with any of the kids. All in all, it was a good season, and E enjoyed it enough to go for another year.

This summer, E hasn’t really gotten into the team spirit. We spent much of the summer traveling, which put a real damper on the training and conditioning. She packed her running shoes for our trip to London and Paris, but she really didn’t have time to use them. Running in another country isn’t the kind of thing you do as a novice runner or a novice traveler, and she was both. Her running shoes sat unused for the whole trip.

We went to the beach soon after, and again, she wasn’t much in the mood for training. The beach has all that humidity, even in the wee hours of dawn, and you have to be a pretty devoted runner to get up before sunrise to get moving before the temperature surpasses the humidity level.  Add to that her fifteen years, her general ennui, her love of sleeping in, and yeah, ain’t nobody got time for that. We did have plenty of time for croissants and pastries overseas and hush puppies and ice cream at the beach. E is a trooper though, and she came home and cold turkeyed most of that at the same time she started running at least three mornings a week.

Seriously, the struggle is real.

Her cross country season doesn’t start until the school year begins, but the coach encourages the team to condition all summer long. Since we’ve been back in town, E has been getting up and out of the house before seven to meet her fellow team members at the park across from the high school. The good news is the park is as sketchy as ever.

How sketchy? Well, let’s see. Last summer, as I mentioned, there was the constant presence of the pedophile in the parking lot. During the school year, the team would meet there and run after school, where they were joined in the park by the pot heads who would get high and harass them. The coach would encourage the burnouts to leave, but he never called the police. Honestly, what was he going to do, call it in every afternoon? At some point, he needed to do the business of coaching. It’s the kind of park where you expect to see broken glass and cigarette butts in the sand box and used condoms on the asphalt. It’s a real community park, open to everyone.

This summer has upped the ante. Last weekend, a gunshot victim was found in the park. I can’t say for sure if he was murdered there or just dumped, but regardless, a lifeless body was found with some exit wounds and no breathing. This is not the kind of thing a mom wants to hear.

I waited for some communique from the coach, an email or text or something to address this little piece of  bad news, something to reassure us parents that our children would be safe, that he took their welfare seriously, that their well-being mattered to him as much as their pace.

I am still waiting for that, by the way. I didn’t contact him myself because, let’s get real, I have a fifteen year old daughter who can barely function from all the mortifying humiliation I cause her. She begged me not to say anything, pointing out that the dead body had already been collected by the coroner and, therefore, the park had returned to the status quo. So I did nothing, waiting instead for E to let me know all was well.

I played twenty questions with her that first morning practice after the alleged murder. No, there was no yellow caution tape in the park. Yes, there was a clean-up crew pressure-washing the area of discovery.  No, there was no white chalk outline. Yes, there were still some mystery stains. No, the coach wasn’t there. Yes, the team captains were instructed to warn the kids about running alone. 

E also let me know there was a new sexual predator hanging around the parking lot, although she wasn’t sure if he was interested in the cross country high school team or the little league baseball team. She also reported that someone dug a hole in the back of the park and filled it up with dirty diapers, the stench of which almost made her puke.

For all you parents who have kids on other teams, take a moment to appreciate what you have. The kids who show up in the heat to play football on the practice field. The girls hitting the volleyball court hard. The basketball games in countless gyms. Those kids all do their sportsing in a designated sporting area, the school gym, the fields near it, the swimming pool. Not so the cross country runners, who like the big mammals of the ocean, need space and miles to do what they do best. These are as close to free range children as there are anymore, and for good reason.

I have to tell you, we live in a nice area of town. I shouldn’t have to worry about homicide, sexual assault, or illegal diaper dumping when I send her off to practice her team sport. I don’t want to discourage my child from participating, so I try to disguise my fears with some advice. You don’t have to be the fastest runner on your team, I tell her, just faster than the kid next to you.

A Jolly Good First Day

Have you ever taken a red eye flight? It seems like a good idea, traveling during your sleeping hours, very efficient really, unless you want to function the next day when you arrive at your destination. Shitty sleep upright in a tiny seat in a tube traveling through the air really isn’t the best way to get rest. But who cares, because you are going on a trip, or something like that.

We flew the red eye to London, which in addition to being a seven hour flight, is also five time zones ahead of us. I don’t much care for flying, which meant that in addition to a seven hour flight and a five time zone adjustment, I also was floating on a nice cloud of Xanax washed down with a bottle of cheap red wine. If you asked me what happened between our landing after eleven in the morning and dinner that night, I would have some significant difficulty piecing it all together. Let’s just see how much I can remember.

Here’s something that’s a little different: European time is a twenty-four hour clock. While we count to twelve and then repeat, those clever Europeans go from one to twenty-four. And yes, midnight is actually 00:00. For vacationing Americans, it adds a level of math to an otherwise fun vacation. I wonder if they have numbers on their watches with faces or if they went military digital.

If telling time wasn’t enough of a challenge, then why not throw in the whole money thing. We are fond of our dollars and cents here at home. In England, it’s pounds and pence, and the queen is on all of it. And coins, Lord, the coins. We never could figure out how much anything was worth, and my husband has a doctorate. Luckily, most everyone takes credit cards (with microchips, so plan accordingly) but there are times when cash was a necessity, and those times made us all feel like ignorant kindergarteners. I wanted a worksheet to color in or a play register or something just to practice.

We spent a crazy amount of time at the airport, just trying to orient ourselves.  We stood for what felt like an hour in the customs line and then stood in another line to exchange money at what had to be a pretty shitty rate. After that, we stopped at what looked like an independent coffee house, only to find out that it was a chain, before we lamented how much better the chains are anywhere but home.

My husband got in line to buy tube tickets and ask out how to get to Kensington while the girls and I protected our pile of luggage from potential pickpockets and thieves. All that took another hour before we figured out what the hell we were doing. Seriously, we spent almost as much time at the airport as we did flying there across the ocean.

We emerged from the tube station with our rolling suitcases in tow, orienting ourselves not only to the direction of our hotel but also the driving. You don’t look to the left before crossing, you look to the right. If you can’t remember, just look down, as it is written on every crosswalk. Is that just for non-British visitors, or do even the Londoners have trouble remembering which way to look before crossing the road?

While walking to our hotel, we passed the most amazing assortment of high end cars along the way. Bentleys, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferrari, Aston Martins. I might see one of those every now and again at home, but this was literally every car on the street. BMWs and Mercedes in London are like Hondas and Toyotas at home, practical and affordable. Is everyone in London this rich, or is it a Kensington thing? The parallel parking spaces lined both sides of the street and even had handicapped spaces, labeled clearly on the road as “disabled.” Those Brits don’t need some cute little blue wheelchair symbol; the word disabled is bloody fine for them.

After checking in and dragging our luggage upstairs, we freshened up and headed to the Museum of Natural History. Every step reminded me we weren’t in the US anymore. The sidewalks were old. The buildings were old, each older than the one next to it. Even the signature red phone booths were old. When was the last time you saw a pay phone in America? I didn’t step inside to see if they actually had functioning phones because I didn’t want also want to find out if the booth smelled like urine.

The Museum of Natural History was not like the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian is like it, really like every museum we went to in London and Paris, only with a much smaller collection. These buildings and their contents reek of history. They are positively infested with it.

We and a few other lollygaggers were forced from the museum promptly at 17:50. You do the math, and then stop trying to make sense of it. We staggered out to the street, trying to decide what to do next. The museums were closed, we weren’t hungry, and we didn’t know where to go, so we started walking over the uneven stones of the sidewalk. We had a few moments of feeling unsafe, but that was more due to our American paranoia than any actual threat. We walked and walked, and then we looked up at nirvana, only it’s called Harrods.

Have you ever been to Harrods? It’s a department store that dates back to the 1800’s and a must-see for anyone who likes shopping and eating and people watching and creating generalizations about other ethnic groups. I only say that because the only people there besides other American tourists were Saudi Arabian shoppers, and the Saudis were ready to throw down some serious poundage. We minced from department to department, trying to not touch anything worth more than our plane tickets or stumble and God forbid break something that would cost our daughters a year in college, while all around us, wealthy, swarthy Arabic men and their insanely gorgeous and overly covered ladies who walked several steps behind them were catered to in the watch and shoe and other designer sections. Both my feet and my overactive imagination just wanted to sit down and take it all in.

We took a detour to the Diana and Dodi Memorial on the lower level. I wanted to get a picture, but the pilgrimage line was too long for me to snap a quick one. Instead, I stood behind more Saudi shoppers and tried to explain to my teenage daughters who Diana and Dodi were and why they are remembered in a department store with a cheesy statue and glamour shots. It took just enough time before it was my time to capture the moment.

My children wanted to stop by the toy department, ogling over toys they would have wanted if they were younger or those like the ones they had, only with cooler, British names. We all were a little sad that we had no reason to buy anything, no more tank engines or woodland creature families dressed in gingham.

We consoled ourselves in the great food hall. We were too late for the true Harrods ice cream experience, but we improved our moods by walking past the displays of fruits and vegetables, pungent cheeses and smoky charcuterie, seafood and sushi and meat pies and oh, the pastries and breads. It was overwhelming, really, and we hadn’t had dinner, and in our heads it was either mid-afternoon or a day later. We were trying to make a decision about what to eat, which as a family is not our strong suit, when the bakers began condensing their display before closing time. We decided to get not quite but close to one of each, over twenty pounds’ worth of flaky pastry creations.

We limped back to our hotel room and ate them all standing over our bed, flakes raining down on the covers. Our first day of London was everything travel should be, confusing and delightful and informative and overwhelming and amusing and just, just amazing.

Up, Up, and Away

Remember when air travel used to be pleasant? Yeah, me neither.

My sisters and I flew quite a bit when we were kids because our parents were divorced and didn’t live within driving distance of each other. We were three bored and poorly supervised girls on a plane, and no amount of free playing cards and wing pins would keep us quiet. When the magic ink pen word search and connect-the-dot books lost their thrill, we would occupy ourselves with making sculptures out of our untouched microwaved “chicken” and “potatoes” or sticking sanitary napkins in the sick bags. It would kill an hour and a half, and then we would be either with our father or back at home, none worse for the wear.

Air travel today isn’t the Norman Rockwell painting that it was for us back in the 70’s and 80’s. Now, you have to get to the airport two hours early. You have to fret over your suitcase’s weight more than your own. You have to hope the over used and under serviced self-check-in kiosks function. You have to partially disrobe based on the whims of your jaded TSA agent. Sometimes it’s your shoes, sometimes your jacket, sometimes your belt, none of it consistent. You are subjected to the caste system implications of by-zone seating, after you have already experienced watching the wealthier and more frequent travelers taking advantage of the fast-pass system of security clearance.

If you are lucky enough to board and have room to stow your carry-on in the overhead bin and not under the seat in front of you, you then sit and wait. Is today the day the plane leaves on time? Is your flight lucky enough to not have mechanical difficulties?  Is there a storm brewing in the opposite corner of the country that somehow is causing delays in your faraway and poorly connected part of the continent? Did you flight crew show up? Are they rested and sober?

If all the stars are aligned and the gods are smiling on you, you might just take off on time, which is also not really a fair description of departure and arrivals. In case you never noticed, airlines pad their flight time to avoid costly fines due to too many delays. So your flight that looks like it’s two hours really only takes an hour and a half. Sometimes you arrive twenty minutes early, or so you think. Win-win, right?

We used to pay for the convenience of air travel, and it was a comfortable and pleasant experience. Now, it isn’t any of those.

When my family and I travelled to London and Paris, we got the best and worst of both worlds. We tried to save a buck or two on flying to London and back home from Paris, which meant we had two stops in each direction. It saved us almost a thousand dollars on airfare, but you get what you pay for, amiright?

We left our home town and flew to Washington, D.C., and luckily, it was uneventful. We checked in and passed security in plenty of time to sit and wait for our zone to board last. I popped half a Xanax and don’t really remember much of that flight.  After a quick connection and another half a Xanax for me, we landed in Ottawa, Canada. We were in another country. You might say it doesn’t count, but my passport stamp disagrees with you.

Immediately, we knew we weren’t in the U. S. The border agents were polite, and the rest of the airport staff was extremely friendly. Seriously, those airport Canadians could give us Southerners a run for our money.  In fact, one lady we spoke to at the information desk asked us where we were from, and when we told her South Carolina, she told us she always wanted to visit our state.

“Really?!?” we said in unison.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s warm there.”

We charged our electronic devices and tried to find dinner somewhere other than a Tim Horton’s, which seemed to me a Canadian Arby’s and thus still not anything I wanted to eat.  After waiting for a thunderstorm to pass (who knew they had lightning in Canada?), we boarded our first international flight to London.

I expected the plane to be bigger.  I also didn’t expect the sleeping pods of first class to be so amazing, but they sure looked like they were as we walked past them to get to our economy seats. We did have video screens in the back of the head rests, and each of us had a complimentary pillow and blanket waiting in our seats, so it wasn’t too shabby. We all settled in and waited for take-off, which I am pleased to report was uneventful.

Immediately, we were served a full dinner at almost eleven at night. My fifteen year old daughter was next to me and also high on Xanax, as she seems to have inherited my fear of flying. When the flight attendant stopped at our row, he offered us food trays and then a choice of red or white wine. My daughter didn’t know what to say, and started mumbling about how she was fifteen and didn’t know what she was supposed to do and didn’t think she was old enough to drink, you know, playing it cool, but he interrupted her again. “Red. Or. White.” It wasn’t so much a question as an order.

“White,” she meekly responded.

And thus my daughter was served her first alcohol, which is a fabulous way to wash down that Xanax she took, as she sat next to the Parent of the Year, also high, with a bottle of red wine on my tray.

I don’t really remember much after that. At some point, they collected the trays and dimmed the lights. At some later point, they turned up the lights and forced a moist package of banana bread on each of us. And then, there we were, Heathrow airport in London.  The return flight from Paris? Well, that, my friends, is a story for another day.

My point is, if you have to fly, fly first class or overseas or both. If not, take a Xanax. Don’t be scared to wash it down with a little bottle of wine. If a fifteen year old can do it, so can you.

What I Did for My Summer Vacation

I travelled.

This wasn’t my usual trip to Atlanta to see my sisters or five hour drive to the beach or even the more rare flight to Orlando to see the Mouse.

My family and I, much like the Griswolds, took a European vacation. We spent four nights in London and five, with an unplanned sixth night, in Paris. We flew from our town to Washington to Ottawa to London. According to our passports, Ottawa counts as having been in Canada, which means we had our first practice run on going through customs and changing flights in another country. In between London and Paris, we took the Eurostar through the Chunnel. We had an extra night in Paris, well, a hotel near the airport, which in itself was an additional adventure. Then we came home and our lives are forever changed.

You know a vacation is good when you take days not just to recover, but to process. To think about all the things you did and saw and ate. To consider how life is different but the same. To be glad to have the things you missed but to lament the things you don’t have that you experienced.  

My main regret is that I forgot to pack a notebook or journal. I know I am going to forget something, some thought or opinion or observation that thanks to my forty five year old brain will be lost in there forever.  As I continue to reflect on my trip, I have been increasingly unsure how to write about it. Do I write a chronological detail of every day, of every museum and meal, hoping that by retracing my steps mentally, I will recall all the thoughts and feelings I had at the time? Do I concentrate on anecdotes, telling a snippet of here and there, in no particular order other than how I remember them? Do I ponder the ways in which the little bit of life abroad I experienced compares and contrasts to my own typical days here in the Southern United States? So many options, so many possibilities, so many ways to tell my two week story that may have possibly changed my life and the lives of my children.

I am asking you to weigh in. I don’t tell my stories in a vacuum. I share them with you, when you stop by for a little visit. The truth is I have a lot to tell, and in my head, it’s all fucking fantastic and interesting. At the end of the day, however, isn’t this the modern version of having you all over for dinner and then forcing you to sit through the slide show of my vacation? I already did that on Facebook, by the way. I attempted a daily post or two of the things that captured my attention, sharing small observations along the way. It’s not the same thing as painting those pictures with words.

So, if you care to comment, tell me what you would find more interesting. Do you mind sitting through the “we did this Monday and we saw that Wednesday?” Or would you prefer a more all over the place approach, like what makes our toilets so different or who knew that was what yogurt could taste like? Granted, you are going to get a whole lot of B with your A, so keep that in mind.

And please stick around, because I am pretty sure in the story telling, I will have something for everyone, even if all of it is really for me.

Ditching the Double Standard

I am sick and tired of the double standard.      

My friend MS’s daughter wore, as she put it, the “dreaded yoga pants,” to high school, and for violating the dress code, she received in-school suspension. The same week, the school planned “water play” day for the students, and the girls were instructed to not wear white t-shirts. MS was pretty upset about the suspension, but more so that the same week, the school in essence sponsored a wet t-shirt contest for the high school students and then gave it a name that half the student body uses as a keyword for porn searches. Why is it not okay to wear long black fitted pants one day, but the next day students are encouraged to soak and squirt each other, making their clothing not only sopping wet but also clingy and revealing?

The whole dress code issue is out of hand lately, with top students being stripped of their honors for wearing spaghetti strap dresses to award ceremonies and plus sized students banned from proms because even in a long sleeved gown, cleavage is showing. School dress codes and fashion trends have never seen eye to eye, but the burden of this issue is always on the female students.  Wouldn’t it be great if school administrators could stop being the fashion police and get back to the business of educating?

I am a fan of uniforms for this very reason. Between the ridiculously overpriced preppy clothes that are so popular in the south, the attempting to dress for the temperature, also a Southern issue, and the constant uncertainty of what is or isn’t permissible, uniforms would pretty much solve all of those problems. I don’t understand why more parents don’t see it as a pretty easy solution.

That isn’t the only double standard that has me all riled up right now.

While young girls face all that pressure to look or dress a certain way, they have no end to the burden of maintaining an unrealistic and usually unattainable physical appearance. Women face an enormous amount of pressure to preserve their youthful look but men are allowed to age gracefully. I can name a handful of men that are still considered sexy despite their advanced age, wrinkled faces, and graying hair. I can only think of one woman with gray hair, Jamie Lee Curtis, and all she is fit to do is sell yogurt that helps you shit.

Men have somehow managed to turn bald heads into something so desirable that even men with hair want to shave their heads. I will never understand why anyone with a perfectly good head of hair would prefer to shear it off in the name of fashion, but it appears to be a trend that is here to stay.  Just a reminder, men, enjoy it while you have it. Chances are good that one day you won’t have it to cut off.

What’s your opinion of the hipster beard? I have to admit, I find them fascinating, but at the same time, how fucking unfair is that? I have been shaving my legs and armpits for over thirty years now, and for at least the last decade and a half, I have felt like I had to reduce the amount of hair in the basement because even pubic hair has been subjected to social pressure. Meanwhile, men have even less to do to maintain any sense of good hygiene. They can let both their face and crotch hair grow out to caveman proportions, and everybody is super cool with it.

The epitome of the double standard is something called dad bod. Dad bod is what a guy looks like when he drinks all the beer and eats all the bacon cheeseburgers he wants, leaving him with a borderline barrel gut and noodly thin arms from not lifting anything heavier than he can fit in his mouth. You know, like your dad. It isn’t a repulsive form, it’s just a normal body, maybe a little pudgy in the middle, maybe a little touch of gynomastia, not enough to make people cringe, but enough to say, hey, I don’t need to look like I do Cross Fit. I am comfortable in my body.

Name me one woman you know who is comfortable in her body, ever.

Men have reached a point where they have totally given up. They can be bald, hairy, flabby, gray, wrinkled, whatever, and they somehow make it not just acceptable but hip.  Women, on the other hand, are having Brazilian waxes and labial rejuvenation surgery because even their pussies can’t look old.

Why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that baby vaginas are in and have been for a while? Anyone else creeped out about that?

I would say it’s time to embrace the mom bod, but I too have been conditioned to think that mom bods are better not seen by the naked eye. I don’t want to gawk at another woman’s lumpy cellulite and stretch marks and wrinkles and sagging breasts any more than I want to look at my own. Blech. Droopy knee skin. Bat wing upper arms. Turkey necks. So many ways to self loathe. Are women going to be able to start growing out their upper lips and those three wiry chin hairs? If men can be lumbersexuals with questionable hygiene and dad bods, can we trend #lunchladylook?

In an ideal world, we would stop judging others and ourselves by our outer layer. We would go back to considering intellect, compassion, ingenuity, hard work, creativity, friendship, humor, empathy, and caring as the things that are important, the things that matter.  Kim Kardashian’s or Nicki Minaj’s butt wouldn’t be more important than ending world hunger or saving the whales. Girls at school would be more concerned with being top of the class and less concerned with who has the straightest, blondest hair. 

We have our priorities all fucking wrong, which is why a girl is excluded from learning because she wore the wrong pants to school. It’s also why a woman who grew another human inside her body feels like she needs to surgically remove her loose skin before she can wear a bikini, or why a post-menopausal woman feels she needs to continue having a moist vagina to compete with her husband’s Cialis prescription. We forgot how to value what makes a woman amazing at every age, and it has very little to do with how she looks.

What's My Motivation?

Sometimes going to the gym is torture. It is all you can do to make it through your workout, and you barely feel better for having gone. Other times, it is perfection. I don’t know what makes a perfect day for you, but for me, it’s the total experience. It isn’t just the work out or the motivation or achieving the optimal level of endorphins. It is more about getting your fitness on while being totally entertained, exercising with so many good distractions that the time flies by, that you don’t even realize you were working out.

Last Saturday was that day.

I went to spin class at an earlier time than I usually do, and I had an instructor that honestly is not my favorite. He has been teaching the early Saturday class for over ten years, and other than an occasional change in music, he hasn’t really mixed up that workout in over a decade. He speaks in a monotone voice for fifty-nine and a half of the sixty minutes of class, and only a handful of his words are clear enough to be understood. The rest of them are garbled like an airline pilot’s.

He likes to sprinkle his commentary with motivational things like “this is you” and “this is what you can do.” After hearing him say that for ten years, it’s more depressing than inspiring. I imagine him saying it in the form of a question, “this is you?” or “this is all you can do?” The rest of the time, I pretend he is making comments about our altitude or how long the flight will be or when it is safe to take off our seatbelts and move about the cabin freely. He takes a break in the narration every so often to exhale loudly into his microphone.

He also uses his words to paint a little picture to distract us from the fact that we are in a smelly dark dirty spin room. Normally his imagery revolves around climbing a mountain on a last leg of an intense bike race, where we try to fool the riders in the front to think we have lost our mojo until we barrel past them with a burst of energy no one expected from us.

Saturday, he took it old school. We were steam engines. We were shoveling coal, chugging along the tracks, and releasing hot clouds of sooty smoke into the air, until suddenly, we transformed back into racing, sprinting hard core cyclists. I was so confused. Am I the little train that could or Lance Armstrong? How relevant is a steam engine to today’s workout? Is it too soon to use train imagery following the latest Amtrak tragedy? I recall at one point thinking, wait a minute, I’m winning a bike race? What happened to my coal shoveling?

It was awesome.

During the cool down, he recapped whatever the fuck he talked about for the whole class, with our levels three, four, and five, our switchbacks, our hammering, our patting ourselves on the back, all while mopping the sweat from his face and his laminated workout cheat sheet he parks on his handlebars.

As fascinating and distracting as his teaching style is, it doesn’t even compare to some of the spin class regulars. There was the German man who sits near the door, the one who looks remarkably like Robin Williams.  I love when he is there. He wears a mock turtleneck shirt in that spandex wicking material which accentuates his aging man breasts and brings a gym bag that is more like an old-fashioned salesman sample case, square and bulky. He unloads three large water bottles and balances them on the water cage of his bike, because he takes his hydration very seriously for an hour class. Then he puts on a head covering made from the same material as his shirt, which I believe it is referred to as a “do-rag.” Halfway through class, he takes off his long sleeved mock turtleneck fitness shirt to reveal another mock turtleneck shirt made out of the same material, only with short sleeves. I never see that part coming.

About forty minutes into class, German Robin Williams takes off his do rag and swabs his balding skull with a hand towel provided by the gym. Then he holds the do rag in his fist and squeezes all of his sweat into one of those complimentary hand towels before putting it back on his head. It is a whole process, and he does it every time.

It was also awesome.

Who showed up next but the weird woman who loves exercising. She doesn’t just love to exercise, she LOVES to exercise. She came in halfway through spin class, hair long and flowing, big smile on her face. She saddled up on her bike, and after a brief warm up, which I think for her might be foreplay, she was ripe and ready to go. She began to make those whoop sounds. She closed her eyes and felt the music. She bounced on her bike. Chances are better than not that she was experiencing multiple orgasms. Some people might think she is extremely enthusiastic. They are wrong.

It isn’t just awesome, it is also an uncomfortable sight to see, and you don’t even need internet access or verification that you aren’t a minor.

After spinning with the airline pilot, the German sweater, and the spinner who gets off in public places, I cooled down by walking a few laps on the track. In the work out area was a man doing the most awkward squats ever. He squeezed his eyes and knees shut and sat back like he was going to fall in a toilet. I have no doubt he was at the very least holding in a fart, but based on his facial expression, he might have been holding in more or failed to do so. His form was terrible either way.

Next I walked past the man who wasn’t just balancing on an inflatable fitness ball, he was actually humping it. I have never seen anyone else violate one of those balls like that, but it seemed to be working for him.

Awesomeness.

As I completed my last lap, the creepy old guy who wears long camo pants, Birkenstocks, sunglasses, and a really unfortunate wig came in to “work out.” Usually his work out consists of walking around the gym, scouting out any prospects. Sometimes he parks himself on the abductor machine so he can scan the entire square footage while demonstrating his inner thigh flexibility. He apparently doesn’t let his seventy plus years stop him from using the gym as his own personal Tinder because he can’t use apps on his jitterbug phone.

In a word, awesome.

A perfect gym day like that may only come once in a lifetime, but the chance that it might happen again is what gets me there every day.