Laughter being the best medicine has become a bit of a cliché – laughter and meloxicam maybe – but I do think it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself, and this includes laughing about arthritis. Between all the sad and frustrating stories you accumulate, you’ll also have a few funny ones, and this is one of mine.
In my footloose and fancy-free days, a friend and I decided to take a weekend road trip along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. We checked into a backpackers’ hostel in Lorne in the late afternoon, and sitting on the table in the backyard was a rather dreamy Canadian backpacker playing guitar (cliché anyone?!) who seemed to be travelling alone.
My friend and I dumped our stuff in the dorm and got ready to go out –my arthritis didn’t stop me doing much back then, but I had rather swollen knees that I was quite embarrassed about. It was right at the top of both knees, they looked like a couple of grapefruits, so my knees were even wider than the narrowest part of my thigh! I usually wore skirts that just covered them, and my secret was safe.
We were about to leave and the guy was still mooching round the hostel, so we asked him to come with us! We went to the Lorne pub, had a few drinks with the other backpackers and surfers, and danced till the wee hours of the morning before walking back to the hostel.
Things were going well with this guy so my friend went to bed and we stayed up in the lounge to have another drink. We were talking, and started making out, when he looked down for a moment and said ‘Oh my god…look at your legs!’ My skirt had ridden up revealing my distended knees shining in the moonlight in all their grape-fruity goodness. I was mortified. I have never so truly felt the meaning of wanting the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I couldn’t even speak. Which, looking back, was the best thing that could have possibly happened.
“What are you, a kickboxer or something…?!”
It took me a moment to process this. The guy thought they were MUSCLES. Giant bulgy thigh muscles on me, who had never stepped foot in a gym in her life. I had a choice. I could tell him the truth, or just go with it.
“Haha…umm…no… I just…errr…ride my bike a lot, I guess.”
It was so awesome! Hardly an Oscar-winning performance but he seemed to buy it… hahaa I’m laughing to myself now thinking about it. And since I’m not one to kiss and tell (much more than this!), I’m going to sign off here 😉
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(Any opinions expressed in Hannah’s blog are not necessarily shared by Arthur’s Place. Nothing that you read in Hannah’s blog constitutes medical advice.)
