[Editor’s Note: Welcome again to “The Return of Bad Joke Friday!” Eh? Of course, if it gets any later, this’ll have to get passed off as “Bad Joke Saturday,” and then you all can be visiting after your own long runs, and talking amongst yourselves about all the horrible interpersonal relationships y’all have had. Heh. Wear a wire, and send me the tapes, OK? ;-)]
ULTRA RELATIONSHIP NEWS
Number 4, “Fitness Nazi”
by Yours Troubly
(With all due homage—and nothing else—paid to David Mamet,
but now with somewhat necessarily changed language,
due to polite society)
[Eddie and The Strawman have just concluded their horrendously long Saturday morning run of at least 8 miles. So it gives them lots of time to reminisce afterwards, over good ol’ McDonald’s coffee—with the occasional small bag of fries thrown in on the side.]
EDDIE: So, it’s been awhile. You got a new flame?
STRAW: (correcting) HAD a new flame.
EDDIE: What happened?
STRAW: The chick was insane!
EDDIE: No.
STRAW: Yeah!
EDDIE: You’re not serious.
STRAW: Serious as a myocardial infarction.
EDDIE: No. Not an “INFARCTION”! Anything but an “INFARCTION”!!!
[They laugh]
STRAW: It’s a good word.
EDDIE: Aptly describing?
STRAW: Right. One huge gigantic total FARC-UP.
EDDIE: Did she at least look good?
STRAW: Check. All stringbeans and mussel clams. Good enough to eat. Raw!
EDDIE: Especially the stringbean.
STRAW: Hah! Right!
EDDIE: OK, she was hot. Where did ya meet?
STRAW: I was a guest at CrossFit.
EDDIE: No. Yeah?
STRAW: Yeah. Whatshername the bodybuilder brought me in there.
EDDIE: I thought she ran out on ya?
STRAW: This was before.
EDDIE: Oh.
STRAW: I met this here Rosa. She’d told me her name an’ I looked her up after The Babe split.
EDDIE: You do get around.
STRAW: I mean, this Rosa. Wow.
EDDIE: Nice clam, huh?
STRAW: Served, like, inside a headlock.
EDDIE: Hah! Next to the bean!
STRAW: Right!
EDDIE: Raw.
STRAW: Like, just plucked.
EDDIE: Right out of “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”
STRAW: This raw-ness doesn’t just grow on trees, ya know.
EDDIE: I don’t suppose.
STRAW: It has to be cooked.
EDDIE: Simmered.
STRAW: Steamed! Steam-cleaned and hand-rolled.
EDDIE: What are we talkin’ about?
STRAW: Who, not what.
EDDIE: Who then?
STRAW: Flockin’ Rosa. At the CrossFit joint, they called her a “Fitness Nazi.”
EDDIE: “Fitness Nazi.”
STRAW: Good term, no?
EDDIE: Almost as good as “infarction.”
STRAW: Right. So, like, this Fitness Nazi’s “thing” is: NEVER relax. DON’T stop. And see how many dudes you can take down for a 3-count.
EDDIE: She wrestled?
STRAW: Dam tootin’. Strong as flock, too.
EDDIE: She pinned you?
STRAW: Hourly.
EDDIE: In the sack, though. Right?
STRAW: She never was in the sack. She never slept!
EDDIE: So where’d she wrestle?
STRAW: All over the rug. Then she actually tried to hang my whole bod outside over the porch bannister.
EDDIE: She has a house?
STRAW: No. A two-bedroom apartment—on the flocking FOURTH FLOOR!
EDDIE: She tried to kill you?
STRAW: Just “toughening me up,” she said.
EDDIE: She was a Marine? Special Forces? Ninja Death Squad? What?
STRAW: Nah. I told ya. She was a fitness Nazi!
EDDIE: Fought for the Germans in World War II. Old as dirt, she must be, huh?
STRAW: Get off. I’m talkin’ TOUGH CHICK. Late 30s, early 40s. You know this here TV show, “American Ninja Warrior”?
EDDIE: Yeah.
STRAW: She had half the Las Vegas course laid out in her living room!
EDDIE: You’re kidding me.
STRAW: Ain’t kiddin’.
EDDIE: Nah. You’re flockin’ with me now, dude. What the hell landlord lets chicks build Ninja courses in the living room?
STRAW: Bedrooms too.
EDDIE: No.
STRAW: Yeah!
EDDIE: She got Ninja hardware inside her bedroom?
STRAW: Flockin’ A. If you’re gonna flock around with her, ya gotta do it on a cargo net.
EDDIE: No.
STRAW: I mean to tell ya!
EDDIE: You ’n’ Rosa, doin’ “the nasty” dangling precariously off a cargo net.
STRAW: The hallway was footstools. Skinny footstools. Wobbly footstools. Ya hadda jump from one to the other just to GET to the bedroom.
EDDIE: Whoa.
[They drink]
EDDIE: Well? Did she time you? How long in gettin’ there—with a stopwatch?
STRAW: Flockin’ A. This chick was RULED by the clock.
EDDIE: You’re kiddin’.
STRAW: Ain’t kiddin’! She was wide awake every morning at 4 AM. Down for pushups and then out the door for her DAILY 6-mile sprint.
EDDIE: I was gonna ask if she’s a runner.
STRAW: Sprinter! First thing she does—when I met her there at the CrossFit—she comes up to me, shoves her big leg in my face, and says: “Feel THAT, cowboy.”
EDDIE: No.
STRAW: Yo!
EDDIE: So, did you?
STRAW: I’m like, “You want me to feel THAT with my hands, or with my mouth?”
EDDIE: Good line!
STRAW: And she goes, “Both. But not in that order.”
EDDIE: Musta been “love at first bite.”
STRAW: Flockin’ A. I’m tellin’ ya!
EDDIE: You were impressed.
STRAW: I was floored! I reach up to touch her thigh and, next thing ya know, I’m body-slammed.
EDDIE: Tough chick!
STRAW: She picks me up off the floor an’ invites me over to her place.
EDDIE: For bandages?
STRAW: For a salad.
EDDIE: That’s probably all she eats.
STRAW: You flockin’ A. I walk into her apartment and think I’m on TV.
EDDIE: “American Ninja Warrior.”
STRAW: She got flood lights beamed on all the jungle gyms. She got the warped wall for pull-ups practice. And she got nothin’ but lettuce in the fridge.
EDDIE: You checked.
STRAW: Flock. It was suppertime!
EDDIE: You were hungry. Speaking of which, here. Have some fries.
[They eat, and sip their coffees]
STRAW: She was sumpthin’ all right.
EDDIE: Did she time you doin’ the whole course?
STRAW: What whole course?
EDDIE: Her apartment jungle gyms! The Ninja course!
STRAW: Nah.
EDDIE: “Nah”?
STRAW: I got the hail outa there.
EDDIE: Too freaky?
STRAW: Too smelly!
EDDIE: What?
STRAW: The whole joint just STUNK! She got this dog. All penned up inside one of the apparatus. Never let him out, from what I could see.
EDDIE: So, the dog stunk up the place.
STRAW: No, SHE did.
EDDIE: SHE did?
STRAW: I don’t think she ever showered.
EDDIE: WHAT?
STRAW: She never had time to!
EDDIE: You have GOT to be kidding me.
STRAW: Up at 4, exercise till 5, run to 7, catch the bus and be to her job by 8. Lunchtime sit-ups, planks, and pull-ups from the employees’ coat rack. After work: CrossFit. After that: home for salad. All evening: Ninja-ing all over her front room. All night: asleep on the cargo net. When’s time to bathe?
EDDIE: Or walk the dog.
STRAW: Flockin’ A!
EDDIE: Sad.
STRAW: Then, like today? Saturday? Sunday? It’s 50 miles, baby, each day!
EDDIE: Without a shower after.
STRAW: I don’t know how she could. Her bathroom ceiling had still-rings bolted in, and swinging handgrip balls were above the tub—which she filled with that foam rubber chit you see in track meets by the pole vault and high jump.
EDDIE: Whoa.
STRAW: I figure, if she lost her grip Ninja-ing around up there, best water she could hope for was falling into the toilet.
EDDIE: Hope she flushed it first.
STRAW: I didn’t hang around to find out.
EDDIE: You “held it in”?
STRAW: All the way to the nearest IHOP!
EDDIE: You did NOT want to use her john, huh?
STRAW: No. (pause) You finished?
EDDIE: Yeah.
STRAW: Let’s blow this joint,
[They get up, bus their plastic and styrofoam, then leave]
Happy Long Run Tomorrow, Every Body!
Yours troubly,
Rich Limacher
TheTroubadour@sbcglobal.net
(“in the Middle Ages, us knights in rusty armor prefer our damsels to be more in dat dress and less in distress”)
Yankee Folly of the Day:
Just imagine not bathing for 72 WHOLE HOURS, which, of course, is just exactly what “their” noses are asking for by letting ME run 3 Days at the Fair next week.
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