Belly Flop

There’s a little “pub” near here where we go quite often for dinner. Nothing fancy, usually a salad and soup on those nights when I work a little late and we’d rather sit and talk than hurry up and cook something. You enter this pub through the bar, then make a quick turn through another door into the restaurant part.

One night last week, as we were leaving the restaurant, stepping into the bar, I felt a chilly sensation across my front middle. To be more specific, I felt a brisk breeze across the approximately 1.5″ swath of belly skin (fat) that was inadvertently exposed. See, the good news was that I have lost the tiniest bit of weight, so that the jeans were slipping down. And the bad news was that my shirt was too damned short and my gut was busting out.

Something about the breeze on my belly, and the shock of my exposure, and the wondering how many fools at the bar had noticed, tickled my funny bone and I started to laugh. Without pulling down my shirt. Which sounds odd under the circumstances, but there was a method to my madness. Jif and LG were slightly ahead of me walking out. I wanted them to see that this hysterical thing was happening, but I didn’t want to shout ahead, “Hey! Look at my belly!” (Because that would be gauche, and as you’ll see, I am anything but gauche.) So I thought, if I’m laughing (as I was) and lagging behind (as I was), when they turn around to see where I am and what’s so funny, and they see my belly hanging out, they’ll find it just as funny as I do.

So, soon they turned and saw and heard me laughing. And they grinned a little, but that really was not what the occasion called for, so I had to raise the stakes. I bent backwards and stuck my belly out, and pulled my shirt up more, and went after them! Then they started laughing like they were supposed to.

I chased them down the sidewalk and out into the parking lot, as they laughed and yelled things about how terrifying the situation was…

::tangent::Here, there was a drama within the drama. Since LG was little, our rule, in fact her very first rule, was WE HOLD HANDS IN A PARKING LOT. Now, this started when she was barely toddling, and as she got older, of course we relaxed the rule. But for some reason, it’s been revived. Just to torment her, we remind her of THE RULE. And we chase her down in parking lots and grab her hands while she screams and laughs hysterically and tries to escape from us, and we go on about “YOU KNOW THE RULE!” and people stare at us like we’re idiots or like we’re abducting her. So, yea, not only are Jif and I chasing LG down to enforce THE RULE, but my big fat belly is shining to light the way.::end of tangent::

… and I laughed so hard it’s a wonder I wasn’t peeing (because I’m not QUITE bizarre enough yet, this fat almost-50-year-old woman wielding her belly like a weapon in the parking lot of a strip mall), until I finally corner them at the car.

And they lock me out. So, I do the only thing I can do in that situation. I pull my shirt up even more and stand on tippy-toes to press my belly up against the passenger side window.

We are all laughing like hyenas when Jif finally lets me in. Sitting there in the parking lot before we pull out, in the sighing afterglow of the hilarity, I can’t help but think, “Oh. my. GOD, I hope none of my clients were here tonight.”