Smack Talk

"Come on Grizz! You sleepin' or what?"

Now I know I'm ahead of Mark on the elliptical so far. But just to make sure, I glance over at his machine and check his total strides. Just as I suspected. I'm still ahead. Next to us an older woman is doing her own elliptical workout at a very normal, sane pace.

"Whatever. Check my machine, I'm ahead of you. Hurts, doesn't it? An overweight mom of three is kicking your ass."

Now the lady next to us lets out and audible chuckle and smiles at me. Mark laughs too and proceeds to beat me like he always does. Come on, I can't hold that kind of pace for an hour. I'm an overweight mom of three, remember? But I like to smack talk.

Few weeks later...

"Hey speed racer, you don't have to power up that hill. We still have a long ride ahead of us."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize this pace was too fast for you. Seemed easy to me. Would you like me to slow down?"

Glen had nothing to say back to that, but he did make sure to drop me on water tower hill and on the flat section going back to Henderson. As he should, he's a much more experienced cyclist that me. But, I like to smack talk.

I come by it honestly. Many of my family members are also smack talkers. In fact, Mateo it seems has inherted this trait as well. Today at T-ball practice is a good example.

Mateo asked one of the boys on the team what his name was.

"Nothing!" shouted the boy.

Mateo looked confused and responded, "Nothing? Your name is nothing?"

"No. I'm just not going to tell you my name."

I sat in a lawn chair a few feet away observing this conversation while pretending to read my book. I wondered if I could smack this little brat upside his head and make it look like an accident. God, I hope he's not in my class someday. But I didn't intevene. I wanted to see how Mateo would handle it.

"Ok." Mateo said, "Well if you won't tell me your name, I'll just have to give you a name. How about Lilly?"

"Haha. Lilly is a girl's name!" said another teammate.

"Yeah. You can be Lilly. The prettiest girl in T-ball." Mateo sang out with a huge grin as the offending boy's jaw dropped.

I stared down at my book and forced myself not to laugh. Another smack talker. I'm oddly proud of him at this moment.