MY TURN
The Lake Needs Earplugs
Walking is no longer relaxing
Do you love taking walks with your women friends? But when you get home, you wish you could remove your brain from your skull, soak it in chamomile-laced THC, and scream into a pillow?
I hear you. Walking is not what it once was.
In the old days, women would sit on their porches, drinking wine, and then, after a while, get up and walk up and down their streets two by two like swans. These swans didn’t need water because swimming in wine and cigarettes worked fine.
Before Apple Watches and 24-hour cable news, a good walk with a friend was like good sex.
You could fall asleep satisfied afterward. You felt closer to your partner. Maybe they told you some intimate detail of their life — a secret — that made you feel awake in your skin.
I live close to the lake, so I am privy to observing the daily promenades of women.
Watching women-friend-walks in 2023 is like watching enormous, yippy, two-legged Chihuahuas hunched over in big coats, hidden in hats and sunglasses during a tornado.
Are they even trying to conceal their Chihuahuaness? I would be happy to find out they were Chihuahuas and not women. Women have strayed so far from their drunken nicotined swanness.
Women-friend-walkers sound like cable news anchors in a war zone. Staccato and barky, desperate to get their story out. It’s like Survivor and the loudest most relentless talker gets to be the head anchor on a 24-hour cable news channel.
When I walk behind these cable news auditioners, laced with NPR smugness, it feels as if they are changing the temperature of the lake with all their hot air.
Why can’t these mouth monsters let me enjoy the peace and serenity of the lake?
It pisses me off and forces me to yell into my speakerphone. I’m trying to have a conversation with my girlfriend, ladies. Could you talk softer? I can’t hear myself yell. So selfish.
Thanks to T. Kent Jones for editing.
