Pull ups
I remember a time in 5th grade when our whole class […]
I remember a time in 5th grade when our whole class had to do our annual fitness testing. One of the tests was to do pull ups. A few kids in my class did one. Most did none. I did 10. I should probably mention that I weighed about 70 pounds at the time, and I spent my summers doing physical labor in my dad’s excavation business. As a featherweight in good physical condition, I had a significant advantage over my classmates.
Fast forward a few years into the pubescent high school days. Every young lad was trying to prove his strength and display his physical prowess to the ladies. Male peacocks show their magnificent tail feathers, but high school boys show their magnificent pull ups. I was a late bloomer, so I was lucky to weigh in at 100 pounds if I was soaking wet. However, any advantage I had in 5th grade was now gone, as the other boys got their big biceps while my arms more closely resembled drinking straws. Sure, I could still do quite a few pull ups, but so could everyone else. Let’s just say that I didn’t get a lot of attention from the ladies.
Now, I can do a few pull ups if my life depended on it. Sometimes, I’ll do a couple pull ups on the park equipment when we take our family walks, just so I can show off for my wife. It gets me a little attention from her, which is the only female attention I care to get. I guess I’m still that vain high school boy in some respects.
But lately, I’ve been running into a little bit of a problem. I have some competition. There is another guy in her life who is doing a lot of pull ups. He’s making me look bad. He does about 50 pull ups every day, and he brazenly does them out in the open where he clearly intends to be noticed. His vanity astounds me. But not my wife. She’s a sucker for it. I catch her gawking at him all the time.
Normally, this kind of thing would arouse my jealousy. But not this time—because the guy I speak of is our little guy. He takes after me in his love for pulling up. Although, one way in which he is not like me is that he is quite tall for his age and completely average for weight. I must admit, I do envy him a bit for that.
He’s hit that phase where he’s pulling himself up on every table, chair or toy that will support his weight. When we go into his room to pick him up from his nap, he’s no longer rolling around on his back. He’s standing up, hanging on the edge of his crib and wearing a big grin to tell us how proud he is of himself. I’m proud of him, too.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go work out, so that I’m not put to pull-up shame by my infant.