My thighs have issues

I used to have awesome thighs that tanned copper bronze and maintained a respectable distance of at least two inches apart from each other.

But throughout the past fifteen years or so, especially since the birth of my first child, my thighs have undergone a metamorphasis.

Nowadays, I have to look rather closely to confirm that one has not, in fact, eaten the other.

And currently, they are both pasty white and allergic to air.

Never was I more acutely aware of this predicament than when I took them out for a walk on Memorial Day and let them see daylight for the first time since last fall. I went early in the morning to lessen the chances of scaring the entire neighborhood. My eight year old daughter, Helena, came with me because my cell phone was dead and I needed a means of communication in the event I was tackled, knocked unconscious and dragged back to the zoo to be fed squid and fish because that’s what they feed beluga whales in captivity.

Squid totally skeeve me out and seafood makes me hurl. Hence, the presence of Helena and her uncanny ability to emit a piercing 180 decibel shriek that could wake up the dead and, with any luck, Nate, in the event anyone came close to me with a tranquilizer gun.

My thighs don’t know how to act when outside the confines of jeans and yoga pants and scary electric blue sweat pants from the eighties that I can’t seem to throw away. They experience wicked withdrawal symptoms, complete with the DT’s, especially if they go cold turkey. So, if you were near Plank Road at 8:00 a.m., on Memorial Day morning and witnessed a little girl trying in vain to schlep a female beluga up the sidewalk, stopping periodically so that it could howl GET IT OFF ME! ITCHY! ITCHY! OHHHHHHHHH MY HOLY HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, FRESH AIR IS THE WORK OF SATAN while flapping its flippers about hysterically, rest assured. You were not hallucinating.

My thighs are especially sensitive to any air with sunlight in it. They tend to get their panties in a big, fat, sunburned twist when confronted with the stuff.

Case in point:

This was after being slathered in 45+ SPF and exposed to the elements at a Redwings baseball game for less than an hour that same afternoon.

It’s like a faceless Humpty Dumpty nightmare, isn’t it?

If I owned twenty different pairs of shorts, I’d have simply ripped the hem out of this pair, yanked them down as far as my ass would allow and protected my thighs while looking semi-normal instead of full-on stupid.

But I only have one pair of shorts that fit me right now so, full-on stupid it was.

Who said beluga whales aren’t resourceful?

OK. Enough of my thighs. I’m tired of them. They suck the will to live right out of me.

You know, you’re so lucky. You can just walk away from them. I try, but they just follow me.

Here’s my little peanut, Helena, sitting between her cousins.

Gosh, I just love the stuffing out of that kid.

The three of them are such a bunch of cutie-patooties. See how happy they are? That’s because they haven’t hit puberty yet, much less perimenopause, and their thighs aren’t cannibalizing each other.

They have no idea that it’s only a matter of time before the hormones kick in and flood their bloodstream, causing their bodies to start wigging out all over the place. Little do they know that a mere forty years later, it’s going to happen all over again but this time, their hormones will run screaming for the hills and their thighs will rub together hard enough to start forest fires before they fuse into one ginormous lump of flesh and before they know it, they’re sitting in a stadium with napkins shoved up their shorts, wondering who the genius was who invented baseball anyway and why the hell does it have to be played in the sun and what’s a beluga got to do to get some popcorn around here?

Ignorance is bliss, girls.

No, Helena, your thighs are not sunburned. You inherited your father’s skin which tans in total darkness.

But hey, you inherited my eyesight!

Don’t say I never gave you anything.

This is one of the main reasons I will sit through a game with napkins up my shorts.

My thighs LOVE this stuff.

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with my thighs. I just happen to like it.

That’s Nate’s knee in the corner there. It’s hairy.

I don’t have hairy knees, thanks to Gillette Venus razors and estrogen.

I didn’t think this shot had anything to do with my thighs either. That is, until I realized that it reminded me of that scene in Bull Durham where the coach jogs up to the players having a conference on the pitcher’s mound, wondering what the heck the holdup is, and Crash Davis says:

Well, Nuke’s scared because his eyelids are jammed and his old man’s here. We need a live … is it a live rooster? (Jose nods). We need a live rooster to take the curse off of Jose’s glove and nobody seems to know what to get Millie or Jimmie for their wedding present. Is that about right? (players nod).

We’re dealing with a lot of shit.

So am I. Two thick sunburned slabs of it, covered with paper napkins.

This photo could sum up my thighs in the perimenopausal season of their lives.

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