Today I did the unthinkable.

I haven’t worn shorts in public since I was nineteen.  There’s a story there.  It begins when I was ten.

Walking around a flea market in Canton, Texas in a pair of “jams” my Uncle remarked from behind me, “Your knees look like cantaloupes stuffed halfway down a pair of socks.” The saddest thing?  He was right.  I hadn’t yet learned how to navigate my quickly growing lanky frame.  My knees pounded against one another from time to time when I walked, like wrecking balls persistently swinging too closely together.  They’d collide, ricocheting off one another, making me look for a moment like a giraffe stumbling through a bag of spilled marbles. Then they’d quickly fall back in line with the rest of my body until, a few steps later, the whole process would be repeated.

When I was fourteen I went to the lake with the rest of the youth group.  Even then I was dating way out of my league.  Kim was a competitive gymnast – graceful, muscular, tan, beautiful and about to see my very white hairy thin legs for the first time.  I emerged from the changing room to laughter.  It was probably a snicker or two but to me, in front of Kim, it felt like a cacophony of devastating criticism.  I stayed in the water the entire day, skipping lunch and peeing in the water, my stick legs magically transformed into wavy almost indiscernible lines descending from my shorts and into the darkness of the murky lake.

When I was nineteen, the last time I wore shorts, it was over a hundred degrees out and I was mowing the yard.  Becky, then just a friend I had a crush on, stopped by to surprise me.  I was surprised.  And feeling more than a little self-concious.  So I did what I always do when I get nervous – I made jokes.  She laughed but said I didn’t look bad in shorts at all. 

She lied. 

I married her.

Today, fourteen years later, I bought shorts with her.  She says they look good.  I’ll pretend that’s the truth, because believing a lie sure beats dying of heat stroke on a cruise.

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