Covering My Ass

/ Diane Henders

I expend a great deal of effort just trying to cover my ass.

I mentioned my disastrous bathing suit debacle in an earlier post, and at the time I noted that I’m very careful about my rear view these days.

Not careful enough, apparently.

The other day I bent over to retrieve something from the bottom of the fridge, and Hubby said, “Oh, nice look.”

With a feeling of impending doom, I said, “Thanks.  Um… what exactly do you mean…?”

Sure enough, the yoga pants that are my daily office uniform had succumbed to the pressure.  It wasn’t noticeable as long as I stood upright, but as soon as I bent over, there was my ass for all the world to see through the dreaded transparent spandex mesh.  (No, the pants weren’t Lululemon – check out notquiteold’s funny Yoga Porn post for more on that.)

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Ever since I was a kid, the butt-end of my pants was always the first to go.  All the other kids wore through the knees, but my jeans were perfect in every way… except for the patches on the rear.

I once wore out the backside of a new-ish pair of jeans in one day, but that was a special case – I was shingling a roof and I didn’t have knee pads.  When my knees gave out I finished the job shuffling along on my butt, which was a bad idea in many respects.  Quite apart from damage to clothing, if you’ve ever installed asphalt shingles, you know about those nasty little spiky bits that stick into your flesh like needles.  Try extracting those from areas you can’t really see without a mirror and some uncomfortable contortions.

But getting back to the point…

A couple of years ago I tore a muscle kickboxing.  A muscle in an uncomfortable and embarrassing place:   right at the top of my hamstring.

Which is polite way to say “my ass”.

I didn’t go for physiotherapy.  I just couldn’t bring myself to beg my (young male) physiotherapist to rub my butt.  Worse still, to pay my young male physiotherapist to rub my butt.  It just smacked of desperate cougar-dom.

Anyway, the muscle gradually healed on its own, but it still gives me trouble occasionally.  In the past few months it’s been sore.  I’ve been ignoring it because, hell, if I woke up one morning and nothing hurt, I’d check the obituaries to make sure I hadn’t died in the night.

But eventually it occurred to me that perhaps there was an underlying cause.

Sure enough, when I had a close look at the desk chair I’d been sitting in for the past three years, there was absolutely no padding left in the seat.  It was just a bum-shaped fabric-covered bowl with solid (and extremely hard) wood underneath.

Which probably explains the destruction of my yoga pants, mercilessly grinding between the unyielding bones of my ass and the unyielding seat of my chair.

Now I have a new chair and new yoga pants, but I know I’m solving the wrong problem here.

Anybody know where I can get a new butt?

* * *

P.S. Thanks to everybody for your concern over my eye. (For those who didn’t hear, I got hit kickboxing on Sunday and spent most of Monday waiting to find out if I might end up with a detached retina. I wasn’t even fighting; it was just a stupid accident during an easy sparring session.)  Everything seems fine so far – my eye is still a little achy and scratchy, but my vision is back to normal and the doc has cleared me for easy workouts.  But no kickboxing for a while.  *sigh*

29 thoughts on “Covering My Ass”

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    • To a butt as bony as mine, all chairs feel hard. 😉 And I’d sat in the chair for so long that it had perfectly conformed to my shape, so there was padding everywhere except where I needed it. But YAY pants and chair!

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  4. A little late in responding. As you know, I have been seeking a butt replacement specialist for decades. If I find one, I’ll let you know.

    I’m also late on your eye injury and glad that it’s healing. ‘Detached retina’ is a phrase you never want to hear from your doctor, along with ‘oops’ and ‘this won’t hurt a bit.’

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    • Thanks C-a-L! Yeah, as my last martial-arts instructor told me, “You just need a body transplant.” I agreed. There are lots of twenty-somethings doing nothing but slouching in front of video games – they could wear my old worn-out body and they’d never know the difference. I’d live a happy life in their young, springy one with joints that actually work. Seems fair to me…

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  5. Oh man, you brought me back to my cycling-event days. Black spandex cycling shorts as thin as a vapor straining over the occupant of the saddle in front of me–and you can have the same view for a mighty long time. There should be a Hallmark card to alert people to this.

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  6. Diane… I didn’t know about your eye – glad to hear things are getting better (looking good, as they say!)
    I have a problem with my trousers always ‘going’ in the same place, but I can’t for the life of me fathom why. It’s the material right between the middle of the top of the legs that goes first – presumably I must sit down too much, because I can’t blame it on the walking!

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    • Thanks, Tom! I don’t know if I’m looking good, but I’m seeing good so far. 😉

      Maybe there are closet gremlins at work. I’ve heard they sneak into closets in the night, to make clothes smaller and wear through pants…

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  7. Glad your eye is OK. Never heard of any one pulling a butt muscle but I am sure lots of guys would have massaged it for free. Next time ask someone. No need to suffer. Good Samaritans all over the place. Don’t be em-bare-assed.

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    • You made me roar with laughter. Who says chivalry is dead? All those selfless guys out there, willing to help a damsel in distress…

      “Em-bare-assed” – bahahahaha! 😀

      And it was actually my piriformis muscle, but you have to rub your butt to find it…

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  8. So glad the eye is okay! Retinal detachment is a scary condition.

    Now, you just have to work on your habit of mooning people in your yoga pants. Then again, there are worst things to be known for, and you may make a lot of men happy in the process…

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  9. Well a bony ass is better then a fat ass. I can give you 1/2 of mine and not even miss it…Glad to hear there is no permanent damage to your eye.

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  10. Oh, my gosh! I hadn’t heard about your eye. So glad it’s going to be okay.
    So, between your ass and your eye, are you starting to think kickboxing might not be the best sport for you? 😉

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  13. Yikes! Here’s to a speedy full recovery for your eye and your butt. I’d lend you my butt in the meantime, but I bet my butt’s even bonier than your butt. You’d need a belt to hold up your pants.

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