I See London, I See France...

Sylvia is away for the weekend, again, and I thought I would take the opportunity to write...about her.  She is away with 170 of her closest friends at a women's retreat with our church.  I love her with all my heart and, much like the kids, I would never write something that I thought would embarrass her...but she is going to get me killed one day.  Let me explain while she is still out of the house. 

To do this I am going to have to reveal my age.  Not the numerical age, 45 in case anyone is interested, but my youthful image age.  I met Sylvia's aunt in Germany right after we got married...she was in her 80's.   And I knew very few sentences in German.  I don't care what the calendar says, she was young!  I never stopped laughing or smiling while we were with her.  I also have known people in their thirties who were already well into retirement as far as the fun factor goes.  I think I stand comfortably in the middle of those extremes depending on the circumstances.  Funny faces : Childish.  Joke telling : Junior high.  Trampoline participation : decrepit.  There is one situation that has my feet solidly buried in quick setting and immovable concrete.  New Fashion Trends : Fuddy Duddy. 

There was a time when my friend's son stuffed a rolled up sock under the tongue of each of his tennis shoes to make it look bigger and his laces couldn't be tied.  "Isn't that hard to walk?"  I asked.  "Yes."  He said with a look of 'why do you ask?' on his face.  Teenage girls can ask, "Are you calling me fat?!"  For no apparent reason.  And yet there was a trend where they wore their pants on the widest parts of their hips ensuring that the the answer to, "Do these make me look fat?" was, "Definitely!"  Similarly, Crooked baseball hat?  Don't get it, looks uncomfortable.  "These shoes kill my feet!"  "Throw them away."  "ARE YOU CRAZY!"  My answer, "Yes.  I must be."  (Of course, to be fair, I have so many issues with my feet that I have to wear admittedly odd looking orthopedic shoes to survive.  But if they made my feet stop hurting I wouldn't care if they made fart noises with every step I took.)...but I digress.

The trend that seems to be hanging on longer than it should have been allowed, is the most troubling to me, and the one that almost cost me my devilishly good looks, is guys who hang their pants around their knees to show off their underwear.  You've seen them.  Don't try to tell me that you haven't felt a guilty hope that their waistband would just give up and drop the rest of the way as a way for God to illustrate the point that people have waists for a reason.  Sagging = Silly.  There, I've said it.  I feel cleansed.  I feel the joy of release.  I feel safe, since I am sitting here, in my house, behind locked doors, at the computer, typing by the light of my "you'll shoot your eye out" lamp.  As funny as I think it is, I would never say anything about what people decide to wear.  The same can not be said for Sylvia and that is what I wanted to tell you today. 

One day at the beginning of the whole everybody-wants-to-see-my-underwear phase, Sylvia and I were walking down the sidewalk in Carmel, CA.  Hand in hand.  Just out for a stroll.  Doing some window shopping.  Ahead of us, someone walked out of a store and started walking the same direction as we were headed.  He was a little shorter than me but not by much, he had shortish hair, and we know for a fact that he was wearing red boxers.  Yes, he was what you might call, "saggin."  It was sort of like a car crash, it looked awful but there was nowhere else to look.  Sylvia decided this would be a good time for a community service announcement. 
"Doesn't that look ridiculous!?  His pants just look silly."

"mmm hmmm." Look away Jeff Look away!.

"I mean does he think that that looks good?  Really?"

My best pleading look.  "honeeey."

"I mean honestly.  That is not attractive at all!  Who thinks that is attractive?  There is no one who would think that having your pants down like that looks nice!"

Trying desperately to walk as slowly as I possibly could to give us a little distance between us, I suddenly became very interested in the blown glass replica of the mermaid wrestling with a manatee...dear God, I hope they were wrestling. 

Sylvia would have none of it.  We're walking.  "Does he not have any friends that would tell him that looks bad?" 

"Honey, did you see that manatee?  Very lifelike!  Would fit on our coffee table!  I'll buy you the matching earrings!  My treat!  Let's go back!"

We walked further.  I tried to remember if I had signed my will.

I can imagine what you are thinking.  Carmel is a bustling town.  There are loads of people on the street.  He couldn't have known she was talking about him.  Wrong.  The only thing that could have made that street any more deserted was if there was a tumbleweed rolling down the center of the road while the town clock made the final click to noon.  There was about 30 feet separating the four of us.  That's right, I said four.  It was Sylvia, Me, Red underwear guy, and his gigantic muscles!  This was a guy who could have kicked sand in Sylvester Stallone's face at the beach.  (and Rocky II Stallone, not Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot Stallone)  This fine, upstanding gentleman looked like he worked out more that day than I had in my entire life.  He was one of those guys that makes you wonder, 'what does he do when his back itches?' because there was no way he was getting those arms anywhere near his body.  You've seen it.  His arms were permanently stuck at a 45 degree angle away from his body.  This is who Sylvia decided to ridicule publicly.  Thankfully, and apparently, steroids make you deaf because he never flinched, he never hesitated, and most importantly he never turned around to see me with shrugged shoulders and an incredulous look on my face pointing at my soon-to-be-widowed wife.  No he just walked over to his truck, picked it up, and carried it away.  Whew!

I've heard people say, "Guys with big muscles are slow." but I didn't want to find out what it felt like to slowly give me an indentation of his fist on the back of my skull...from the front.  I dodged a bullet there. 

Now, just so you don't think I am being mean to Sylvia because she is away, let me tell you, something reminded me of this story while she was getting ready to go (I must have caught a glimpse of my extremely muscled body in the mirror...yeah, that was it) and I told her that I would probably write about this episode while she was gone.  She said, "Go ahead.  It looked silly then, it looks silly now, and I would do it again."  Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go check if my life insurance is up to date.