The Happy Grasshopper & the Uptight Ant

Chuckle #414 | July 21st, 2010
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Ever the optimist, I put my bikini on and gazed hopefully into the three-way/full length/no place to hide mirror. And...GASP!  I took the bikini off. For an entire week I ate only carrots. I prayed. I tried again. No luck. My squishy “muffin top”, now carrot enhanced, stared back at me in defiance.

Ever since I was a wee Catholic girl I’ve been told that miracles can happen. But even though I’ve been asking very nicely, God has politely declined to step in and transform my 40 something jiggly mom body into that of a 17 year old Swedish nanny. I believe I’ve been misled.

Apparently God is not that interested in helping self-serving postulants like me. I can’t say I blame her (or him.) If it is true that God only helps those who help themselves, then I am certainly NOT worthy.

Each spring I have excellent intentions of getting in shape. And each spring I fail. I am incapable of making the intellectual connection between what needs to be done to get into bikini shape, and actually doing it. The reality is that I am not willing cut out, or even cut back on my Chardonnay intake in order to don a bikini in daylight. And as it turns out, walking the dog is not really exercise. Who knew?

I lack discipline. I have vices like drinking wine, eating cheese, and sitting around reading the New York Times. I hate to admit it, but if I’m going to blatantly ignore such obvious causal relationships, I DESERVE to be in a tankini.

I am the Lazy Grasshopper of the Grasshopper / Ant story. And I’m pretty sure that the Grasshopper died at the end of that fable. Yet I continue to eat cheese.

What I need to do is simply “accept who I am”…says my daughter, sanctimoniously parroting my own words back at me. The good news is that she actually listens to me when I talk. The bad news is that I now know exactly how annoying I sound.

Actually, what I need to do is visit a place where women aren’t ashamed of their womanly bodies. I need to go to a country like France where even 80 year old grandmas wear bikinis despite being more shockingly veined than the venerable “fromage bleu”. Then I could accept my less than perfect body, (including handles d’amour), be a role model to my daughters, and not have to cut back at all on cheese or wine. Yes, we are talking win/win scenario.

But since I’m stuck in America and deep in denial, I’m still hoping for a miracle to save me from myself this summer. You never know, if God wasn’t able to squeeze into his Speedo this year, I might just score a last minute empathy miracle.

And if that doesn’t work out, I need, at the very least, a new tankini. I’m sure the Grasshopper would agree.
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