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CONNIE BROCKWAY DISCOVERS THE REASON WOMEN PAST 30 DON’T WATER-SKI
I am an athletic woman. I play a mean game of tennis, swim like a fish, and lift weights on a regular basis—heavy weights. So last weekend when we were visiting friends’ at their lake cabin and their son said, “Who wants to go water skiing?” I chirped, “Hey! That sounds like fun! I’m in!” It didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually been on skis in oh, say,... oh, say… wow. Has it been that long? No matter. It’s like riding a bike.

I ignored the startled and/or amused glances of my peers. Just because they have let themselves go to hell doesn’t mean the rest of us have. And not being known for verbal restraint, I think I said something like, “Hey, just because you have let yourselves go to hell doesn’t mean that I have.”

A word here: My “friends” eat up hubris like Takeru Kobayashi gobbles hotdogs.

Forthwith, I found myself with my feet encased in the rubber footholds of some antique water skis, bobbing up and down in a lake, buoyed by a child’s life vest so small it had to be bungee-corded together in the front. How did I know it was a child’s life vest? Were you listening? IT HAD TO BE BUNGEE-CORDED TOGETHER IN THE FRONT TO MAKE IT FIT! Geesh. Somehow, twenty-five people had managed to cram together on the power boat that was going to take me for a spin around the lake. Okay, maybe there weren’t twenty-five but that boat was packed with spectators anddon’t even ask what the horsepower of that baby was because that sort of question is plain old rude.(It was big.) So, there I am.

Confident, even a little cocky, I grasp the tow bar, give a thumbs up and shout, “Let ‘er rip!” With a roar of power the boat leaps forward, the tow line plays out like a striking snake and, knees gently bent, arms straight ahead, leaning back at just the right angle, I surge slowly upright, like Venus arising from Zeus foaming brow. Or the Cracken from the watery depths. It depends on one’s perspective.

Anyway, I am up and it feels fine. Good, even. And I feel powerful, strong, ready for some S-P-E-E-D. I give the driver the sign. At once, the motor boat claws it’s way over the surface of the lake like a mad cat on a shag carpet and I’m in the wake, riding the silky smooth vee behind the boat and I am feeling hot. My legs are steady, my arms fine, all that core training has obviously worked because I am solid on that ride.

It is time to add a little sass to this act.

I decide to give the nay-saying, stodgy, snickering oldsters who’ve come along for the ride a little show. I bend my legs, and my ski’s edge slice through the water, shooting me toward the wake. I fly over it, transposed against the sky in a moment of aerial artistry, my arms over my head to take up the slack and bang! I hit the water. I don’t even miss a beat. My pals in the boat applaud. They laugh with pleasure! A few of the women actually shake their heads with the wonder of it!

I pull in and carve another route back toward the wake and jump it and then the other side, and then back again. I slalom, I carve, I slice, I curve, I arc. And I am getting a little tired by now. Hell, women half my age (which would make them mere children) would be tired by now. One more wake flight and then I’ll signal for the driver to return me to the cabin. Over I go and this time the land isn’t quite so flawless. I land hard and wobble on my skis yet still catch myself and that’s when it happened.

In the midst of almost losing my balance, I looked down. I saw my thighs.

Now the things my thighs were doing behind that boat as I skimmed over the corrugated chop of the lake surface is best left to the imagination. Cellulite at rest is as about appealing as a body suit made out of cottage cheese. Cellulite in motion is ghastly. But cellulite that is no longer bound by strong young collagen to the dimpled layer of the dermis is, in a word, horrifying.

I looked down and saw the flesh of my legs shimmying like a sixties go-go dancer, oscillating like a can of paint in a Sherwin Williams color-mixer, rippling like the flag in Bush campaign commercial, shaking like sinner at the gates of hell, quivering like… well, you get my point. Not pretty.

I let go of the tow bar and all too slowly glide off to the side and sink beneath the concealing water. I couldn’t possibly have sank slow enough.

Some things you give up because they are no longer worth the effort to do them, like folding tee shirts or theme-sex. Some things you give up because they are simply too physically demanding, like folding tee-shirts or theme-sex. But some things you give up for purely aesthetic reasons.

How about you? Have you ever flashed your past to your great regret? Boasted of a skill you somehow misplaced? Squeezed into a dress you just knew made you look like a triple –threat fox only to see photos later that challenged that belief? Tell me. Share my humiliation. It’s cathartic.

And remember, I’ll be picking the names of two winners to receive autographed copies of the hardcover, large-eye edition of HOT DISH from our membership list this evening!