When I Used to Impress the Boys

When I collected baseball cards
And statistics
Numbers, rattling around inside my head
Hard to make them stick
When you don't really give a shit
And I was even worse at playing
A terrible ballplayer
But the boys thought I was cute
With my little uniform
And my hair pulled back
Into a ponytail

Eventually I got so good at pretending
To be a great ballplayer
That I actually became one
And then I quit
Saying I was bored with it

It's amazing what I could do
When I used to impress the boys

I could arm wrestle any guy
And the guys I liked would beat me
And the guys I didn't like got their arms nearly broken off

It was easy to tell who I liked back then
Because usually they were the boys
That didn't have casts on their arms

I'd read comic books too
And watch horror movies
Oh, and burping

I was a major league burper

This used to mortify my younger brother
Who would later grow up to be a major league wedding planner

'Girls do not burp,' he would say
And I'd say, 'Oh, but boys can?'
And he'd say, 'No.  Nobody should burp.  It simply shouldn't happen ever.'
Then he'd go back to wrapping a scarf he made out of carpet fringe
Around his Superman action figure

I knew what girls did
And I tried not to do it
Because I knew I wasn't pretty enough
To compete with girls
On their own turf

I had awful skin
Terrible hair
And no boobs

None

I still don't have any

So instead, I played at being like the boys
And I thought once I was inside their secret world
I could kidnap one of them
And make them be my boyfriend

But it didn't work out that way

Oh, they were impressed by me
But they certainly didn't want to date me

I thought the two would be mutually exclusive
Don't ask me why

It wasn't until I got to college
That I started not giving a shit
About impressing boys
Or anybody else for that matter

I still wasn't keen on high heels
Or too much make-up
But I gave up trying to like baseball
And I stopped burping

...In public, anyway

I met a really great guy
And we got married
And one day we were at a bar
For a friend's birthday
And the boys all started arm wrestling each other

Money was put down
And whoever won
Was going to go home
With a pretty nice chunk of change

So I rolled up my sleeve
And while everybody laughed
Nobody in the bar had known me
Back when I was a kid

I proceeded to beat
Every single guy there
Including my husband

And I took home that pile of cash

That was the first time I'd done anything like that
Since...well, for a long time

And on the drive back
I felt kind of funny about it

Remembering all the things I used to do
To get boys to notice me

Then I looked over at my husband
In the passenger seat
And he was smiling
He was noticing me
And shaking his head
Like he'd just seen me a do a magic trick

And you know

He looked pretty damn impressed