What’s That Flapping Sound?

People who know I walk 20,000 steps a say have asked me if I ever considered running. I laugh. When I was 28 I had a bad moped accident in Greece and the stateside Ortho Doc told me the good news was I would recover from my hip dislocation, broken leg and broken arm, but that I would never run again. I told him I could not run before so I was even. Running is not in my cards, but the good news is I have not worn out any knees or hips.

I have to admit that all this walking and weight loss has made it easier to run on the odd occasion when I am trying to catch a run-away dog or chasing the recycling truck down the street because I was late in rolling my cart to the curb. The other day I took Shay Shay out for a walk and it was much colder than I had anticipated. In my underdressed state Shay decided she needed a long walk before she would submit to her business.

When she finally decided she was done it started to drizzle, as we were three streets away from home. The cold rain was not helping my situation since I was only wearing a t-shirt and it was about 50 degrees out. Shay also is a bit of a princess and does not like to get wet. I am sure the lab part of her was bred way out and this is a poodle trait. If only Shay realized that a little spritzing of her curly coat improves her look a lot.

With my small dog pulling on her leash we both started to run to get home. Now Shay can out run me any day, but having her tug at me certainly helped get me up to speed and stay there for a good three minutes. Since I was able to run that distance without panting I noticed a different sound, something like flapping. I looked to the sky to see if a large hawk was flying overhead, but saw nothing. That is when I realized the flapping was my own flabby body parts slapping against myself.

Before you blame my large breasts I will tell you I had on my most supportive sports bra, so I ruled out the most likely flapping culprit. That left three potential perpetrators, my stomach, my thighs or the underside of my upper arms. I stopped running very abruptly and practically choked my dog to death as the leashed pulled against her collar. The flapping sound stopped.

Since I have no way to isolate one flapping flabby area from the other I am not sure I will ever identify exactly who caused the terrible sound, but what I do know is the Doctor’s prediction that I will never run again was not exactly true. Instead I should only run with deaf people because the hearing runner will be thrown off stride if they run with me because they will keep ducking and looking to the sky to avoid the large bird of prey that most certainly is flying along with us.