Arm Wrestling

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Here are the sports I am good at:

* thumb wrestling

* knock hockey (if that’s how you spell it)

* House of Dead II

Notice arm wrestling is not on that list.

My first arm wrestling match was with Mom on a family vacation in Utah. We were at a Denny’s and I challenged her for the last fry. To my surprise, she agreed and said something like “Bring it on” and posed for action. I was so shocked that I was paralyzed by paroxysms of stomach-wrenching laughter and my 90-pound mother proceeded to trounce me. Anyway, for many years, I thought I lost that match b/c I was weak from being blind-sided by mom’s sudden bravado. But last night, with the last stragglers of my bday gathering, the meal ended with an arm wrestling challenge. After I lost two girlfriends, I challenged one of their husbands, which my husband pleaded me to avoid, but I was too beset with the giggles to worry about his advice or the fact that the rest of the restaurant had stopped eating to watch us. I thought, how bad can it be? I’m the only one among us who is actually paying a trainer to watch me lift weights.

I lost to everyone. I got beat by Joslyn, Alex, Marla, Martin, and my husband. Joslyn and Marla were even for a while and the boys refused to arm wrestle each other. And perhaps out of bday pity, someone challenged me to a thumb wrestle and I got to win, which was nice.

Oh well. There’s a place for me in the world yet.

5 Replies to “Arm Wrestling”

  1. I believe it’s “nok hockey,” but I don’t think I’ve spelled it, read the word or played the game since the halcyon days of ’77, when I spent much of the summer getting really good at it before getting chicken pox and having to stay home from day camp for two weeks, causing me to totally lose my nok hockey mojo.

    I loved it at your party when Nancy felt your arm and said “Wow, you’re really firm!” and you were like, “Honey, that’s my shoulder.”

  2. okay, nok hockey, thank you. chicken pox really messes with a lot of stuff. i had it during second grade when they studied multiplication tables. i was a zen master of addition and subtraction and it like rocked my world to not have the right answers any more.

    ha ha, i completely forgot that part when nancy mistook my shoulder bone for muscle. thanks for reminding me. i don’t want to forget the good parts

  3. Oh man, I missed the first multiplication day too! And then I came back and we had a quiz and I got everything wrong except two times two and they called my parents! As if I was gonna learn multiplication by osmosis while I was home sick! I think my teacher was just so damn pleased because I was a precocious little six-year-old and I probably hadn’t gotten anything wrong the whole school year. Damn, those were the days. It all fell apart after second grade, though, when I could no longer get by on just being smart and I actually had to start doing things like homework and assignments and stuff.

  4. Did you ever take pre-calc or calculus? What subject was it with cosine and sine and other terms I’ve completely forgotten–trignometry? Later on with math, I was okay, b/c they taught it very simply, but now–oy.

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