In which my mom brings it like an animal

Me: What the hell is going on in there?

Jack: That's mom. She's doing your P90X workout DVDs in the next room.

Me: Holy shit! Is she okay?

Jack: I know. It sounds like a cat in a room full of tall lamps.

(From behind the door, CRASH!)

Mom: I'm okay! It was the chair! The chair fell over!

Jack: She keeps kicking the chairs over. She won't wear her glasses while she's exercising, is the problem. I went in there to check on her and she kicked me in the hamstring.

Me: What's that swooshing noise?

Jack: That? Why, funny you should ask. That...is a hula hoop.

Me: Um... There's no hula hoop in P90X.

Jack: Yes I know. She's made some interesting substitutions.

(From behind the closed door, the sound of hula hoop skidding across the wood floor)

Mom: Whoop! Yikes!

(Bare feet plod plod plodding across the floor, hula hoop is recovered, whoosh-whoosh-whoosh resumes)

P90X guy: Yes! You are an animal! When I said BRING IT, you BROUGHT IT! And you made it YOUR BITCH!

Mom: Wooo!! YEA!! *whoosh, whoosh, whoosh*

Me: Well, hula hoop is good for your abs anyhow... strengthens your... core...

Jack: *shaking head*

Me: What? No?

Jack: *sigh*

Me: She's hula hooping around her neck again, isn't she? She's gonna crush her trachea, I swear.

Jack: It's the only way she can keep the hoop up.

Me: So... when the P90X gang starts in with the pull ups, you're telling me mom participates by spinning a hula hoop on her NECK? Does this make any sense to you?

Jack: She changes it up, though. Like when they do deep lunge kicks she does the "She's a Maniac" run in place thing from Flashdance instead. And when they start doing those pike sit-ups, she sings "Louie Louie" and does that hitchhiker thumbs-over-the-shoulder move. And sometimes when she gets confused she just shrugs and does that dance from the 20's where you put your hands on your knees and then touch your knees together and send your hands off to the opposite knees.

Me: Oh, yeah, that's a classic. You know what? We should make her a new workout DVD. We can be all YEAH, YOU ANIMAL! GRRR!! WORK IT! MAKE THE CHARLESTON YOUR BITCH!

Jack: Heh. YEAH, DIVAS! WE'RE GONNA PAUSE HERE AND GIVE YOU 30 SECONDS TO GO FIND YOUR GLASSES, BECAUSE WE'RE ABOUT TO DEMONSTRATE A BRAND NEW MOVE CALLED WAGGLING YOUR FINGER IN THE AIR TO BIG BAND MUSIC!

Me: ALRIGHT YOU ANIMALS, YOU'RE GONNA PUT YOUR MOTHERFUCKING RIGHT LEG IN, AND THEN YOU'RE GONNA PUT IT RIGHT BACK OUT, LIKE THE DIVA THAT YOU ARE!! 20 REPS, IN AND OUT, GOGOGOGOGO!!!

Jack: HAHAHA!!

Me: Heehee! Oh, we should stop. We're mean.

Jack: We are. She's 65 and she's doing most of P90x for God's sake. That's pretty cool.

(From behind the door, hula hoop skitters across the floor and crashes)

Mom: YOW! Oof! Dang butterfingers!!

Jack: You did P90X a while ago, right?

Me: Pff. Yeah, for maybe a week. I got bored.

Jack: It's repetitive, huh.

Me: Same thing over and over.

Jack: Yeah, I don't know how she keeps up with it.

(The door to the next room opens and mom peeks through.)

Mom: Hey guys, could one of you grab the blue painter's tape for me?

Me: Painter's tape?

Jack: Ab Ripper X.

Me: ...??...

Jack: You know... for the hopscotch part.

Connecting with your blog readers. Alt title: How Flashdance made me foot-rape my dad.

Have you ever had one of those moments of clarity when all of a sudden you see or hear something that suddenly explains for you something that had, until that moment, confused or eluded you for years, maybe even decades prior to that moment?

No?

Damn. I read somewhere that I'm supposed to begin every post by trying to connect with the reader on a personal level, but perhaps I was too vague. OK, more specifically...

Have you ever watched a movie that you hadn't seen since you were a kid, and all of a sudden some memory or experience from your childhood suddenly makes sense?

Kinda? No??

Crap. Alright how 'bout...

Have you ever watched Flashdance this past weekend and remembered the time you were 7 years old and eating spaghetti with butter and wiped it all over your face to look more sexy like Jennifer Beals when she was eating lobster all sensual and messy-like on her date with that guy, and then pulled the neck of your sweater down on one side to reveal your shoulder because Jennifer Beals did that in the movie and she looked super pretty, and then took your foot under the dinner table and pressed it against your dad's balls because Jennifer Beals' date really liked that in the movie?

Yeah? Great. I knew you'd come around.

So I'm watching Flashdance this past weekend and I'm getting a little pissed, you know? Because all of a sudden some pieces of the puzzle that is me are falling into place. Like, thanks to Jennifer Beals, I can't strip worth shit. I mean, the movie DID teach a 7 year old me that stripping did NOT mean tearing your clothes off in neat vertical strips, and thank God for that because that kind of stripping is more time consuming than you'd imagine, especially since you have to prep your shirt with discreet little starter incisions around the neck. But come on, Jennifer Beals running around under a strobe light in a red business suit with her face painted white like a mime is NOT sexy. Such a bad role model for the kids.

Then there's the scene where they're working out at the gym and the one black dancer says to the other white girls, "I'm glad I ain't no honky bitch!" and suddenly the mystery of how my favorite white stuffed animal cat from childhood came to be named Honky Cracker. (Much thanks to Richard Pryor for the inspiration behind the surname.)

Then, alright, there's a scene where she's out to dinner with her date, and her face is all lobstery and buttery, and she takes off her shoe and stretches her foot out under the table and tickles her date's crotch. He's like Whoa! with surprise and pleasure and I remember thinking AHA! Boys must have an extra tickle spot, like an armpit between their legs! I gotta try that trick someday! and about a week later I violated my dad's balls with my foot under the dinner table and he looked at me exactly like you would imagine a man would look at his daughter who had just tickled his nuts. A very very bad face.

So in order to prevent any of you who were thinking of attempting the same trick after watching the liar bullshit movie Flashdance, here are some tips so that you may learn from my mistakes and never experience the horror that is knowing what your dad's scrotum feels like through his jeans:

Step 1) Choose a man who is not your dad. This is the key to a successful sub-table foot jay. Remember that. Don't Tickle Your Dad's Balls. DTYDB. If you think you might not remember that, do what I do when I have to remember something important, which is to create a mnemonic device, like "Dizzy Tits Yowza Diggety Booya." That should help.

Step 2) Some foods are sexy-looking when dripping out of one's mouth. Lobster with butter? Sexy. Peanut Butter Sandwich chewed into a puree and oozing out of one's mouth and off one's chin and onto the table. Not sexy. See how that works?

Strawberries? Yes. Fish sticks? No.

Step 3) Once you've got your non-related nut-ticklee and your sexy food items all set up, it's go time! I never actually got this far on account of my dad's angry iron fist pinning my foot down to the seat cushion and then flinging it aside with the GAH!!! heard round the world, but I imagine that gentle toe coochie-coos probably work better than playful thwak thwak thwaks of the pad of your foot against his crotch. Again though, just speculation. I never even got to first foot base. My dad was such a prude, and frankly kind of anti practically everything, like incestuous patriphilia and reverse molestation, but that's the older generation for you. HAHAHA!!! Sigh. Bless their hearts.