Me? A Weakling???

I've always been the featherweight of the group...ANY group. As a kid I'd get the comments like "A stiff wind would blow you away." As a teen, a guy in youth group would joke that I was so thin I could hide behind a telephone pole...or a blade of grass (except my hair...which was always BIG...FREAKY BIG.) And along with being thin was the assumption that I was a weakling. OK, THAT'S pretty much true, too.

Or is it?

This past July, the girls and I spent two weeks in Montana with my brother who is pastor of a Nazarene church there. My brother is 16 months older than me, and he and I were close growing up...like best friends. We played together as kids and had a lot of fun. Mind you, him being a boy and all, the stuff we played was always boy-friendly. He never condescended to playing Barbies. No, he drug me outside to play baseball, to jump out of the hayloft, to go gloppin' (a game where we'd wear oversized galoshes and step in deep gooey mud, then try to get the loose galoshes out without falling into the mud, and listening to that big "sssssssssssloooooooooooooooP!" sound they'd make as they were pulled free), to hunt for arrowheads (and we found a BUNCH!), to go wading in the creek, to racing our goats (lol). You name it, we did it (except for Barbies, of course)...(no offense to Barbie dot com.)

Anyway....what was I saying?

Oh yes, my brother and I always played boy-type games. One of my less favorites was wrestling. Only he would stay on his knees and I got to get on my feet...to try to even the playing field. Translation: to help me last more than five seconds without getting pinned.

Well, we're older now...especially him. :D But apparently I'm the only one who grew up. While we were there this summer, on our LAST night in Montana, we were at his house for just a very short while and he starts swinging at me, like he's trying to start a fight/wrestle/boxing...skirmish. He just started batting at me, trying to draw me into it. So I decide to go all ninja-queen (or was it karate?) on him and pretend I'm kicking him. I always did that...and he grabbed my ankle, so I jumped up on him. (Shoot, I'm not hopping around on one leg. I'm too dignified for that, lol.)

So he carries me a half dozen or so steps across the room to the junction of two walls (which are made of huge logs because he lives in a log cabin...and which feels like the scales on the back of a dinosaur when your brother smashes them into your back...even if he's fairly gentle about it, lol). With the growing pressure of the dinosaur scales in my back, I give up momentarily and let go of him...and he lets me down. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...no more dino-scales. Whew. He backs away and I walk toward him ... he takes another swing and the "fight" ensues. Still the ninja-queen I give another kick. Wuuuupaaaaw!

My brother doubles over grabbing his hand and rushing to the furthest corner of the room. We (his wife, our mom, his son, and I) all start throwing questions. "What's wrong?!" "Are you okay?" etc., all of which are greeted with "DON'T TALK TO ME!" and some steely glares from my brother.

Finally he gets over the angry-pain (though still in significant pain) and he chokes out, "You've hurt me worse than ANY grown man has ever hurt me." And he coined a new phrase "It hurts worse than a kick in the thumb." It was determined that his thumb was either dislocated or broken.

So of course, me being so compassionate and all, I felt overcome with guilt and cried great tears of remorse. Or not. Okay, the truth is that I laughed......a lot. I DID apologize, but I couldn't help but laugh.

And then I gloated. The next morning at his church I asked if he'd like to thumb wrestle.

He passed.

I'm thinking about offering some sort of body guard service. I figure I'll take 'em down by the thumbs.

And they thought I'd never be more than a weakling....

I showed THEM, Hmmmmmm?