Mighty (Maybe)

The other day (not today, today all I can keep down is orange juice and I feel like someone's slugged me in the gut) Penelope and I were watching, for some reason, clips from Demi Moore movies. Some TV show or something. There's apparently a scene in one of her tough-chick films where she does one-handed pushups, and when this scene was shown it naturally prompted Penny to ask if *I* could do one-handed pushups.

*****

"Oh, sure," I say, chortling as manfully as possible.

"Really? You can?" She sets down her ice water and leans forward, eyes wide.

"Well, yeah..." I assure her, noticing she looks a little too surprised by this and wondering if she's going to as-

"-Do it!" she squealed. "Do it do it do it!"

So now I'm on the spot. "Geez, honey, my back hurts, and I just sat down, and it's not like it would prove anything anyw-"

"-DOITDOITDOITDOIT!"

"Alright!" So I wrestle myself up out of the chair, moaning and grumbling, and kneel down on the rug. I'm trying to remember how Demi did it.

"Okay, let's just see here..."

So I manage to do four or five, and stop just before it's about to get embarrassingly difficult. Then I drag myself back upright and plop down in the chair. "Th...there," I pant. "...Happy now?"

This next one is classic Penelope: "What about with your left arm?"

****

In the end I did one-handed pushups with both my right and my left hand, which evidently thoroughly amazed my wife.

"Wow!" she said, swirling her glass around and clinking the ice cubes together. "I didn't know you could do that!"

"Well," I told her, puffing my chest out a little when I thought she wasn't looking. "You know, I-"

And before I can finish, she blurts, "I mean, you're completely out of shape!"

*****

So there you go. Spouses, male or female, my advice to you is this: if your significant other asks you to do anything just to prove you can do it... don't do it.

You'll come out about the same in the end, and you won't have to spend the rest of the evening defending yourself, wondering when your vertebrae might migrate back into place.