Tag: Drinking

  • Working Out Together

    Who does this? I’m not judging; just wondering if I know any friends, couples actually, who go and workout together? I see this couple activity depicted in tv and movies, and there sure does seem to be a great number of people on social media presenting videos of them and their significant other lifting weights, running, or drinking protein shakes together. They seem to be enjoying each other’s company. Now and then, at the gym or in the park, I will see a couple running together, so I know it happens.

    The reason I ask is that the wife and I might start working out together. OR to be more accurate, both of us will be in the gym at the same time. See, I run and the wife does yoga. Recently, after a back issue, her doctor suggested that she might want to start lifting some weights. She does have a membership to the gym I go to, a perk of her job, so she thought that we should go together on the same day… you know, to help motivate each other.

    I’m not opposed to this idea. I just never saw us as a workout couple on our life BINGO card. When this happens at the gym, she’ll go to her weight machine, and I’ll head to the treadmill. After thirty minutes, we’ll leave together. Maybe we’ll talk about “gains” but I doubt it.

    And I would say that this is the unexpected path that middle-aged life is taking us on. I still hate working out, but I at least know that working out 30 minutes a day, five days a week, can have a huge positive impact on your health. So, I’m not stupid. It’s just not my favorite thing to do. Call it an “eating your vegetable” problem – I know it’s good for me.

    I never really thought about what being middle aged would be like, because I never really thought that I’d be middle aged. Not that I would die young or anything like that; I just never thought about being bald, with a little tummy pudge, worrying about retirement and the cost of college for the kid. Thinking about my life with the wife, I just assumed we’d get older, but look the same, and drink and smoke, eat food we want to eat, never change, and and stay up late every night.

    Didn’t turn out that way. I’m not unhappy about the way things worked out; most of it is pretty great. But now I have things in my life that I want to spend as much time with as possible, and though it’s like fighting the tide, if I can snatch some extra time, I will.

    So, we’re going to the gym together.

  • Short Story Review: “Bowling Shoes” by Noel Streatfeild (Alison L. Fraser)

    [The short story “Bowling Shoes” by Noel Streatfeild (Alison L. Fraser) appeared in Rejection Letters on April 17th, 2023.]

    (It’s a flash fiction piece, so I will SPOIL it)

    I do miss going out and drinking on a weeknight. I don’t miss the hangover that followed the next day. Reading “Bowling Shoes” reminded me of this paradox. (Or maybe it is just cause and effect?) Either way, the story taps in on what a night out with friends feels like. There is a tangible energy here, where anything seems possible and likely; a little criminal activity, a little action, violence and sex bubble under the surface, and all could appear at any moment.

    The details and the structure of the piece is what I enjoyed most. From the first line of the narrator telling us, “I padded my stomach with Mom’s lemon and garlic roast chicken,” so we know that this is a person who knows how to drink for an evening – you need a solid protein base to slow the alcohol from absorbing too quickly in the stomach. And as the friends move from bar to bar, their actions build; stealing bowling shoes, kidnapping a friend, dancing with bros, and stumblingly out of a bar. The narrative keeps moving, never settling to long on any one detail or action.

    Where the story does slow down are in two very curious asides from the narrator about teachers from grade and high school. The first is about a teacher taking kids to a bar to learn pool because of geometry, and the second is a high school teacher saying that a screwdriver isn’t a real drink. Both are instances of authority figures doing and saying borderline inappropriate things to their students. The narrator doesn’t share any insights or feelings in the current situation with the friends, only actions are described. So, these two memories are the only true insight we have to the narrator’s mind set. There is no clear answer here why these two thoughts were shared, but that isn’t a detriment to the story. Maybe it is to show how the drunken mind works, or maybe it was to add to the climax of the story?

    What “Bowling Shoes” left me with was the feeling of both a meaningless and profound night out with friends. People being stupid, but also people out living and experiencing their life. It was honest, straightforward, and also messy and incomplete. You know, like a night out drinking with friends.