Andie.ink

I have two pairs of legs. Now before you look down at your own legs, count them, think about how humans are bi-peds (walking on two legs), and that I am a human too so you are not sure how I have two sets of legs… or wondering if during my brief trip to the Ukraine I got a little too close to The Chernobyl site and I’ve sprouted extra legs that I keep hidden in secret pockets in my pants that I had to contract a very famous designer to make for me… or that I am actually referring to legs that are NOT my own and I’m coming out as a serial killer in this blog who has a fetish for legs… or that I am taking a stab at a metaphor that will end up very flawed and confusing like that time the your youth pastor tried to explain how the trinity works by using characters from The Office (Micheal, Dwight and Jim are NOT representative of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Wait. Maybe… nope. No they are not.) Or maybe this is me telling you that I was born a twin and I reabsorbed my twin’s body except for the legs… Anyway… just don’t over think it.

Also. No. I’m not being pervy and talking about how a man has three legs and somehow I freakishly got stuck with four. Ew. Gross. Why are we even friends if that’s how you think? Wait. Then again that might be WHY we are friends. But it’s too soon to tell. Chances are we have already passed that point in our friendship or we haven’t met yet.

So anyway… I have two pairs of legs. One pair I call my “inner” pair. The other I call my “cushion pair.” You thought I was going to say outer pair didn’t you? No way. I am more creative than that. Ok. I am not. I don’t really call them my cushion pair. I call my second pair of legs my “fat layer.” That’s what my second pair of legs are. The extra fat that encases my “would-be-obviously-stunningly-beautiful-fit-trim-muscular-sexy-pair-of-legs” that the extra fat is PROTECTING. That’s right. My first pair of legs is in the witness protection program.

What are they being protected from? THE WORLD I TELL YOU! THE WORLD. I honestly cannot imagine what would happen to my first pair of legs if they were to ever be exposed to the world. They would be revered. Cut off my body. Studied by science and then put on display in the Smithsonian. THAT my friends is why I keep my second pair of legs covering up my first pair. I am very admittedly opposed to any part of my body being cut off. I’ve had parts taken OUT and I’m all set thanks on having any cut OFF.

I asked my Mom once when my legs got so thick. My Mom was not, nor ever will be, a gentle mother. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “It was the summer you worked at Burger King. All you ate was fast food and then you would come home and eat a bagel with a 1 inch layer of cream cheese on it. You gained some weight that summer.”

Thanks Mom. For nicely telling me that I have an eating problem. *inhales midnight snack*

I wanted to ask her why she didn’t stop me, but I thought maybe it best I don’t ask. I know my Mother better than that. I know that when she walks by you and comments on the fullness of the waste basket what she REALLY means is, “take out the damn trash.” She might read this and say, “Andrea, did you really have to put in the damn?” Yes Mother. We ALL know that even though you didn’t say it, you were thinking it. And she will sigh, make a face and then look at me and think to herself, “Why did I ever encourage her to write dammit?”

So I know better than to outright ASK my Mom why she didn’t give me a nutrition lesson on fast food and its direct correlation to weight gain. Was she trying to fatten me up for some reason? Was she secretly a lobbyist for fast food or cream cheese? I’d ask now, but too much time has passed. What if her evil plan is still on going and I catch on to it and suddenly I find myself with my two pairs of legs in cement boots?

WHEW. Simmer down Andrea. This is your Mom we are talking about. She wouldn’t use cement boots. No. She’d just make me disappear… blame it on my mental health. Ping my cell phone a few times over the next few years to keep my husband’s hope alive. Then she will stop doing it and he will accept the inevitable. That I’ve run away with my boyfriend Enrique to Arizona. He will have me declared legally dead and finally marry his private practice billing secretary he replaced me with. She will have one pair of legs. And chocolate colored brunette hair. Which he swears he isn’t attracted to, but I see the yearning side looks when we pass a brunette in the Lowe’s parking lot. All this because I probably didn’t catch the passive aggressive comment to take out the damn trash. I’d rather remain naive to my Mom’s secret plans.

Since it’s Sunday, let’s take a Biblical look at my two pairs of legs. In Song of Solomon, King Solomon described The Shulamite’s legs as such, “The curves of your thighs are like jewels . ” So. As a Christ follower… (raised in a Dutch Reformed home where we avoided reading Solomon’s Biblical smut in youth group, but then we secretly read it at home thinking that if Jason (not a real person) were to write this in a note to me during the youth group lock-in, I’d totally join Young Life to see him more.) So being raised a Christian, I’ve always been keenly aware that even the wisest person who ever lived thought that chiseled muscular legs were the ones to be desired. The curves of MY thighs are more like Jello. WAIT. That’s it! It’s a misprint. A cross-cultural misunderstanding. A wrong contextulization. A bad translation. There was no Hebrew word for Jello so the stenographer, I mean scribe, accidentally wrote jewel instead of jello.

Whew.

Now I feel WAY better.

But for real. I really do have two pairs of legs. Because underneath my fat layer… my legs are REALLY strong. When it comes down to it, I am always shocked at what they can do. Especially when I am getting out of the car and have a 3 year old in one arm, carrying a car seat in the crook of my other arm, a diaper bag in one hand, my purse over my neck, a few grocery bags in the other hand, a stuffed animal in my teeth and I have to shut the car door somehow. My 6 month stint in ballet combined with my Dad’s obsession with Walker: Texas Ranger when I was a young child comes in handy as I deliver a pretty high round house kick to the car door. I’ve had the police show up thinking we were setting off fireworks during the illegal days. They never believe me when I say it was just me kicking my car door shut. So I let them search my house and property for remains of spent fireworks and when they don’t find any they leave putting me on the watch list for the Fourth of July. Ok. That last bit isn’t true. They don’t put me on their list because they’ve gotten too many complaints and are sick of coming over.

I know fit people. I COULD spend a few extra hours a week and shed my fat layer pair of legs. But then I look at the pile of laundry where our couch used to be. It still might be there. I don’t know. I left that couch at our old house with a Post-It-Note asking the new owners to please return it if they ever found it under the laundry I left on top of it. Really it needs it’s own milk carton photo… but then again, couches aren’t mobile so I’m pretty sure it’s under there. What I am saying is that I COULD loose the fat layer if I would JUST do this or JUST do that. I look at pretty women who have nice legs and for like TEN seconds get motivated to start running again or eat a salad.

Then I feel drool on the back of my neck drip down into my cleavage as my teething one year old chews on my shoulder to relieve her gum pain while she pulls on my hair for fun because she’s bored in the carrier while I am grocery shopping. All while the other three kids are yelling at me for more popcorn chicken while arguing whose more thirsty and who will die first from starvation and thirst while I literally shop for more sustenance to feed them.

“Oh.” I think to myself. “Keeping my children alive is probably more important than pleasing a dead King who wrote Biblical smut with some sexy Bejeweled leg eye candy. Besides. Bejewling my legs would probably hurt more than actually working out so I’m just going to grab these granola bars, shove them down my children’s throats so they will be quiet for one gosh darn second instead of worrying about how many pairs of legs I have. Where is my Bejewler anyway? I haven’t seen that thing since my Mom used it to label her denim vest with the words ‘Mob Boss’ that summer I started working at Burger King.”

And then off I will go. Down aisle 12 to grab butt cream for diaper rash and butt wipes for my family so I don’t have to scrub out poop streaks in their underwear with bleach.

Oh. That reminds me. I need to book that ticket to Arizona…

And stop worrying about how many pairs of legs I have. My neck chins are starting to get jealous.