Page 78 of Ripped & Shipped
“You’d like to think so.”
This woman never gives me a break, that’s for sure.
I mimic her movements again.
“Now, raise your arms overhead, into the volcano pose, shooting all your energy out through your fingertips.”
I do what she says. Another click of the remote.
After a few more standing poses, Ella Mae gracefully drops to her mat and crosses her legs with ease. She’s flexible. I’m … not.
I take a seat on my mat, struggling to cross my legs.
“It’s okay,” she assures me, even though she captures my struggles on film. “No one is flexible at the start. You’ll get there with practice. Just do the closest thing you can without injuring yourself.”
We move through a few seated poses, and then she has us on our hands and knees like dogs. Although, apparently we aren’t dogs, we’re cat-cows. What the heck? Who names these positions?
Mountains aren’t standing. That should be called a tree pose. Volcano, well, okay. But I think a volcano should have spread legs at the bottom so it looks more like an actual volcano. And this, Cat-Cow? Who came up with that? Dr. Seuss?
We arch our backs, and then we drop our lower backs down, and again, and again. And then, the most embarrassing moment of my life happens.
Alone. With Ella Mae. In the very silent space that is her front room.
I fart.
It’s not a quiet little something either.
This gas came without warning, and let itself be known. And now I’m redder than a beet. All that not-blushing I was doing before, well, that doesn’t matter. Because now I’m blushing, and also planning to re-enlist in the military just so I can never be seen in this town again.
Ella Mae looks over at me, obviously hiding her reaction, though there’s a light in her eyes that tells me she’s dying to crack up, big time. I can’t believe I have the courage to meet her eyes.
“Don’t worry, Soldier. It happens to the best of us.”
“What does?” Am I really trying to deny that very obvious and explosive intrusion to our workout?
Ella Mae spears me with a look. I can’t take it. I start chuckling. She sees this as the green light it is, and laughs with me. Our heads fall forward, all yoga poses abandoned. She flops onto her mat, doubled over in laughter.
“Your face,” she says between laughs. “You were horrified!”
I just laugh some more, sitting back on my heels and taking in the exquisite sight of Ella Mae curled up in laughter on her yoga mat.
People get her all wrong. They have no idea the heart behind the facade she dons just to face the world and gain whatever it is she’s after—approval, maybe. Her livelihood, for sure. But I get to witness this unrehearsed, unscripted side of her.
Her laughter dies down.
“We’ll never speak of that again,” I tell her.
“Oh, you wish,” she says with that same spunk that keeps me on my toes every time we’re together. “I’m so bringing that up. It was classic! You were all serious, arching your back, and then bffftttt, and you looked like you were ready to move to a remote village in the Andes.”
“I did consider reenlisting for a minute.”
She laughs some more. “Chris, join the human race for once. We all fart. And we all mess up. You get to be just like us. You don’t have to hold yourself to these incredible and unattainable standards, you know?”
She’s sitting now, staring at me like she didn’t just expose me down to my core.
I take her in. No one has ever seen me like this. Not even my family. Maybe Alex. Maybe.
“Okay. Well, I think that killed the mood,” she says. “We’ll do more yoga tomorrow. Let’s get our savasana on.”
