I live across from a beach known as “Thousand Steps” due to the mass of stairs to get down to the water. My seven-year-old says it’s actually 221 steps to get down – 442 both ways, he’ll have you know. But there might as well be a million when you have a lawn chair on your back and a cold beer waiting at home.
These steps have been my training ground for getting into shape for the school year. My “MILF regimen” Joe calls it. Every fall I go through this freak out, he says, where I feel old, mom-ish, and overwhelmed with what kind of erasers I’m supposed to buy for our kids’ desks. So I pick some workout poison and drink it up until Thanksgiving, according to his Cynthia calendar, and then I go dark.
While I find his analysis a tad irritating, I know that he’s right. Just as it was when I was twelve, it’s all about looking hot in my jeans around my peers.
Sadly, I got a late start this year. School starts for my kids on Tuesday and I’m sweating between my stomach rolls. Not exactly the first day of school air-kissing-my-homegirls physique I was striving for. But Tori Spelling drops more weight in five hours than I need to lose in five days so, really, what kind of message would I be sending my children by giving up?
This was what was running through my head as I “did the stairs” in the beating down sun after a highly caloric lunch today. This is what was running through my head when a young skim boarder hopped up to a step above mine and asked me out.
“What?” I asked as I took my headphones out.
“Will you go out with me?” He asked again.
“Me?”
“You, pretty lady.”
This guy was gorgeous. His eyes, those teeth…But come on. I’m twice his age. He had to have known there’d be some wisdom behind these crow’s feet.
“How much are your friends down there paying you to ask me that?”
“A Red Bull.”
My bowel-blowing humiliation equals a Red Bull?
“Well, what if I had said yes?”
“I would have asked you to buy me the Red Bull, I guess.”
“You’re kind of an asshole, you know.”
“I know. But for what it’s worth, you’re hotter than my mom.”
“Thanks.” I said, and put my headphones back on and sprinted up the rest of the stairs, knowing he was watching.
Honestly, I can’t tell if this is a high point or a low point for me. Regardless, it looks like my kids are taking the bus on Tuesday.
