Today I want to share a guest post with you. My wonderful hubs had a birthday yesterday. He shared this story with a close friend of ours and thought it would make you laugh like it did me, and I was there!!

Enjoy!

Someone asked me yesterday how old I was. My response was this was my last little birthday. Next year is THE BIG ONE. The true test of my age came when I took the girls to the pool yesterday and they dared me to do a back flip. I declined on the basis that it’s been probably 15 years since my last back flip. That, of course, wasn’t good enough so they got all the other kids at the pool to start chanting “BACK FLIP, BACK FLIP, BACK FLIP….” Never one to back down from the challenges of 7-11 year old girls, I rose to my feet. Fully expecting to turn a back flip into a back flop just to shut them up. I walked to the side of the pool, turned around with my back to the water and with all the confidence I could muster knowing extreme pain was about to surge through my entire body and most likely linger for several days. I jumped into the air and threw my legs up over my head and braced for the pain. Surprisingly enough, the bottoms of my feet hit first. I did it. 39 years old and can still do a back flip. The kids loved it. Other parents were amazed. Danna was in total shock. (She had already dialed 911 and was holding her thumb on the green button ready to summon the ambulance.) And I was beaming with the confidence of my youth. The kids wanted an encore. Who was I to deny them that pleasure? I was a lean, mean flippin’ machine. Until I got out of the pool. I stood up on terra firma and realized that one flip had sucked all the strength out of my middle-aged legs. I felt like I was walking on wet noodles. Reality set in and I went back to the lawn chair to rest up for the 300 yard walk back home that was inevitable in the next 30 minutes. For one brief air-born moment I was 18 again. Thin, dark, nimble and athletic. Now I’m back to reality. Pudgy, pasty white, stiff and weak.
This story (as pathetic as it is) brings back lots of memories about the Elks pool. Good times….Good times.

Travis Reynolds