To give a figging or not? That is the question.

Wait, that should have read to give a fig. Sorry about that…but hey, it got you here so you may as well continue reading, right? This is a little conversation I had yesterday with Honey. For those of you who don’t remember he had a very severe accident last summer involving his left hand. Since then we’ve be doing therapy on it. And by that I mean, nurse Bambi puts a low-cut shirt on every evening so he can’t refuse when I lean over him to massage his hand. He’s not a very good patient. In fact he’s not patient at all.

Anyways, there we were yesterday sitting having our Friday afternoon cocktail while we discuss the week and I bring up the progress of the hand. Did I mention that Honey doesn’t like to talk about the miserable F*cker as he calls it? He hates that he only has about 75% use of it so far. This was to be expected as there’s a whole pile of small muscles and ligaments that don’t get worked doing normal everyday activities. Point is? It’s time to step-up, now that’s he’s healed, and do actual exercises that work these muscles. I know *gasp* novel concept. But here’s the thing, the exercises are kind of silly given what Honey does for a living with his hands, so of course the male in him is going to balk. And by balk I mean absolutely refuse all of my suggestions. *sigh*  Here’s the conversation.

“I’m not doing that.”

Undeterred I said, “I’ll get you a wrist weight. You can flex it with that.”

“You do know what I do with these hands every day. A little sissy-ass weight isn’t going to do squat.”

“I bought a ball for you to squeeze.”

He looked right at me. “The green tennis ball?”

“Yeah.”

“Crushed.”

“What do you mean crushed? I just bought it.”

“And I crushed it when I was watching that documentary on cults.”

Although I was glad he had the strength in that hand to do it, feats of strength weren’t the purpose of the ball squeezing. And being that he brought up a specific show he’d watched, I knew where this was going. He’d start talking about the program and we’d get sidetracked. Not this time.

“You were supposed to use it as resistance.”

“I did, but it didn’t resist when I crushed it.”

At this point I’m silently fuming Men! When I persevere. “What about a dumbbell?”

“Waste of money.”

“All right.” You have to image that was spoken between my tightly clenched teeth. “We need to get your wrist flexing down.” As I demonstrated and was going to ask him for a suggestion, as you know, if a man thinks it’s his idea, the idea is marked with brilliance and immediately initiated. There I am making a scooping motion with my hand to demonstrate when an idea comes to me. *cue light bulb pinging on here* “Hey, why don’t you use water resistance. You could go in the pool and do the doggie paddle. Say, start with five laps and work up.”

Yeah, I really hadn’t thought this one all the way through before I blurted it out. But, hey, sometimes my off-the-wall ideas really work. As to that? This wasn’t one of those times. I do have to say, though, that the expression on Honey’s face when he looked at me was priceless.

“The dog paddle? You want me to do the doggie paddle?”

Did I mention that Honey was somewhat of an athlete at school when it came to most sports, but especially swimming? To this day, when he does the crawl the water barely ripples. So yeah, I may have wanted to tweak the doggie paddle comment to a breast stroke with a twist or something. Drat!

His tone was deeper when he spoke, which was kind of surprising because I thought it would be the other way around, given how incredulous he was.

“You want me to go into our pool and do the doggie paddle, back and forth, in front of my girl? Perfect. My hand will be working better, but there goes my sex life.”

Admittedly he was being a tad melodramatic here, but he did have a point. Just the visual of Honey doing that kind of paddle had me inwardly doing a Homer Simson shudder.

“I’m willing to compromise, though. Get me a bucket of sand.”

I was still trying to get over the visual when I frowned. “Excuse me?”

He sits forward, spreads his legs like the bucket’s between them and starts to make a digging motion with his hands. “I’d rather dig sand then emasculate myself swimming like a toddler. Doggie paddle.” He shook his head. “I think my idea of the sand would work to make the hand stronger.”

See how he did that? Like he’d have ever come up with the idea without me leading him to it. Sheesh. Time for a hair flick and one of my patented zingers, no?

I look right at him. “Great. You’re going to need a stronger hand. Because, until I get the visual of you doing the doggie paddle out of my head, you’re on your own, babe.”

LOL! The look on his face? Once again priceless. Aw, he looked stricken, but did I give a fig? Nope. All I kept thinking was, when I buy the bucket I’m going to see if I can get one that has a little doggie on the front of it. Heheheh. I’m so bad. Poor Honey.

Riley