Speedos

We had a French post doc in our lab for awhile, and, as it turned out, he had a red belt in Tae Kwon Do. So when he found out I was going to TKD classes via the school’s TKD club, he decided to tag along. Naturally, he had left his TKD uniform in France. He wrote home and asked someone to mail it to him, but in the meantime, he had to wear street workout clothes. This was very unfortunate. Not so much for him, but for the rest of us in the class, because his street workout clothes consisted of teeny tiny shorts and an oversized t-shirt. The overall effect was an outfit that appeared, at first glance, to be just an oversized t-shirt. This was very disturbing, particularly if he did a high front kick. It was bad enough that our TKD instructor started asking him when exactly his uniform would be arriving from France.

Around the same time, Athletic Post Doc taught Grouchy Guy and me how to play squash. To reciprocate, I offered to teach them how to swim. (Don’t I sound so athletic and in shape? It’s all a sham. At least, it is now anyway.) We had already had a few lessons when French Post Doc discovered what we were doing and asked how much I was charging for the swimming lessons.

Visions of his chicken legs topped with a European bathing suit swam into my head, and I told him, “It’s free unless you wear a Speedo. Then it’s $50 an hour.”