I’ve Got A Thing For Guys With Big Q-Tips

My name would be Cougar or Might oooh ooh or Lightning. That’s a good one. I would color my hair a lovely auburn with blonde streaks. I would wear red hot pants with a black pleather body suit. I would apply far too much eye make up. And I would kick ass.

I would be the BEST American Gladiator. I LOVE American Gladiators. Deeply, embarrassingly, can’t-believe-I’m-telling-you-how-much-I-love-them, love. I remember watching them Saturday nights when I was growing up (yes, I was the most popular kid in school). I thought they were all so awesome. Big muscles. Great smiles. Shiny costumes (I do like me some pleather).


And the games. Well the games were great. Two grown men chasing each other in gigantic hamster balls? Thwacking each other with oversized Q-tips? Ducking and covering while being shot at with deadly tennis balls? THAT is entertainment. And I would love rooting for the gladiator. I knew each one of their names for appropriate cheering. I enjoyed watching them kick some mere mortal’s scrawny patooty.

So needless to say when AG made its big television comeback on Sunday I was thrilled. I counted down the seconds until the referee’s starting whistle. And it was all just as grand as I remembered. All the great games were still there. All the great pleather. And with the developments in steroids over the past decade, the muscles were even BIGGER!

Just one thing had really changed for me. Turns out, I’m a mere mortal kind of girl nowadays.

I found myself routing for the red guy or the blue lady. Hoping that somehow a 130 pound preschool teacher from Wichita could creep and crawl her way past the 205 pound Hellga (who interestingly does not get to wear pleather hot pants).

How have I gotten so soft?

Well what I do when I notice a change in myself from my effervescent youth is turn to my own little Gladiator. And that’s it. She is little. Little bittle. Not dangerously so. She just is petite in a land of average. She weighs as much as many 9 month olds and even though she is nearly 2 and a half, I have to cuff her 24 month jeans.

She comes from tiny genes. I top out at 5’1”…in heels. And while her dad is jolly and looks great in green, he is far from a giant. So she is small. But I root like hell for her.

She came back from school last week talking to me about how she hit a little boy. In the head. Because-and this is a direct quote-she was just “SO ANGRY!” At first I was very upset. Hitting is bad bad bad. And I started giving her the lecture-but then I asked why she hit him. Apparently he pulled her hair, and this is not the first I’ve heard of this boy’s pulling ways. She is cute and little so sometimes the bigger kids like to treat her like an oversized doll. In fact the teachers were telling me that they encourage her to fight back.

She still got the no hitting lecture. But in the secret I’m not allowed to say it out loud because I’m the Mommy way, I’m proud of her. When you are the little gal in a group of bigger little guys it’s not always wrong to stand up for yourself. And let’s face it, a lot of 2 year olds just aren’t going to respond well to “Please don’t pull my hair, it hurts ever so much."

So go Little Blue Man. You kick some Gladiator Pleather Coated Ass.