Fat-armed and dangerous

Women of my thermostatically-challenged age group often worry that they will start looking like their mothers. This is wasted worry time, because they WILL start looking like their mothers and even grandmothers. It's a done deal.

My sister and I have a much more frightening concern. We might start having swinging arm flab like our elementary school music teacher! First thing in the morning, when other women are staring into the bathroom mirror looking for gray hair and eye wrinkles, Mary Jane and I pretend to direct the sixth grade SSA chorus. Does our arm flab swing back and forth more today than yesterday, than last month, or last year? Does it swing back and forth enough to hypnotize a sixth-grader??? Does the flab look so bad a sixth-grader will lock his/her knees, faint, and fall off the risers during the choral concert?

I don't remember much about the choral concert, except that a kid named Steve had the lead role of the duck. As a second soprano, I sang mostly, "He swam round and around and around and around..." I had a pretty voile dress in Monet cool colors and my first pair of nylons. Voile is back in this year. Fainting on the risers is not, and neither is swinging arm flab.

I had a better role in the sixth-grade dramatic presentation of "Julius Caesar by Shakespeare Adapted for Young Performers". I got to be Caesar's wife, Calpurnia. Caesar was played by the sixth-grade heart throb, Clint Dudley, with his tight jeans, million dollar smile, Roger Staubach passing arm, and Beatle boots. Still, it was tempting to lock my knees, faint, and fall off the stage, strangling myself in my bedsheet tunic ala Isadora Duncan.

If I could stay up late enough, I might find an infomercial for the Amazing Ginsu KTel Swinging Arm Flab Reducer, starring Rosie O'Donnell. Trouble is, I fall asleep singing, "He swam round and around and around and around."