Lifting weight may help ‘bingo wings’ take off

By Jackie Papandrew Comments 0
Published: November 5, 2009

I’ve started lifting weights. OK, I’ve actually lifted one weight, shifting it from one hand to the other, for a couple of days now. Lifting two weights at the same time was a little too ambitious for my long-delayed return to fitness. So, I’m starting out slowly.

You may think I’m lifting weights for cosmetic reasons, in an effort to look "cut” and "ripped” or some other painful-sounding adjective. You may think I’m hoping to be considered a sleek and sexy cougar on the prowl for a younger man. But you’d be wrong, my friend. I’m actually just hoping to avoid inadvertently taking flight in a strong gust of wind.

That’s because I’ve apparently grown wings. Yes, wings.

I didn’t even know I possessed birdlike qualities until just the other day, when I was standing in my kitchen, and I raised my arms to lift something from an upper shelf. This is a normal, kitchen-type activity that I’ve done many times before. But this time, I got a figurative punch in the gut from my own children who, I’d like to point out, were sitting nearby eating food prepared for them by the person they were about to insult.

"Whoa, Mom, put down your arms,” said my daughter, covering her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to look at me. "You’ve got some serious bingo wings there.”

"Bingo wings?” I asked.

"Yea, you know that arm fat that, uh, older women get, especially women who play bingo?”

"Older women? Arm fat? Bingo?!” I sputtered.

"Nothing personal, Mom,” chimed in my son — the one expecting me to soon start paying his college tuition. "But you could clean off a chalkboard with those bingo wings of yours.”

You carry them through nine months of pregnancy. You labor in agony to bring them forth into the world. You sacrifice time that you would undoubtedly have spent in exercising if you weren’t driving them from one activity to another. You lose sleep for years worrying over every aspect of their lives. And then you stand in your kitchen with flabby, careworn arms that could be used as cleaning implements by a school janitor, and you watch the ingrates once known as your children snicker at you behind their hands.

I beg your pardon, as my grandma used to sing to me, I never promised you a rose garden. Now I know what she meant.

So, as I said, I’ve started lifting weights. Well, I’ve started lifting weight. This weight weighs a whole 10 pounds. I can lift it into the air and then bring it back down.

And as long as I hold on to this weight, I’m pretty sure my bingo wings won’t lift me off the ground.

But I may soon send those kids of mine airborne.

Syndicated columnist Jackie Papandrew is a Bartlesville native and a University of Oklahoma graduate. Visit her Web site at http://jackiepapandrew.com.