Smart Aleck Belly Button
Two months ago reader Carroll gave me a little orange talking pedometer. We laughed and laughed when I opened the package, both of us imagining the sure hilarity of drudging around with a bodiless voice attached to my hip, brochures slung over my back. I pictured myself getting slim and trim, Avon buns of steel, spurred on to new brochure chucking heights with that pedometer. I drove home, through the valley covered in violet grapes turned raisins and the clear green-blue cement snake of the California Aqueduct resting in the sun, and I counted one, two, three, four, five in my mind, seeing a new customer with each step. I have a vivid imagination.
But here's my confession. I'm embarrassed to say it. I only used the pedometer once, the day I returned from my trip, on a short walk through six streets with my boys and books, a walk of exactly two thousand, five hundred, eighty-three steps. Those healthy exercise people say you should walk ten thousand steps a day. In two hot and sweaty hours of trekking across uncharted subdivision territory, I knew I'd never make those ten thousand steps, not with two tag-a-long munchkins and a heavy backpack, and the hiccup and lurch of door-to-door Avon. I got discouraged and let the boys fight after it after that day.
Week after week, as we spread books through the neighborhood, I heard the tinny voice saying "You have walked ten steps." Pause. "You have walked twenty steps." The pedometer sang too, according to the package, a selection of rousing campfire songs, but we couldn't get that feature to work. The boys ran circles around me, shimmied up and down palm tress, chased each other through customers' backyards where I'd stand, arms akimbo, and yell, yell, yell "7 and 9 stop that this instant! Get over here NOW!" The surgeon general would be proud. My boys never tore through town without the electric vibrating chime of "Congratulations! You have walked ten thousand steps!"
Last week we trudged up the Big Hill, the steepest tallest canyon incline in my small town. It rises from my neighborhood to the swanky mesa ridge road filled with modern art homes overlooking the ocean. The boys ran ahead, stopping to watch a two-tailed lizard hiding beneath the fallen broad leaf of an avocado tree. He zipped into the brush, brown and mottled with lumps like pimples, as my heavy steps approached, and I lowered the backpack to retrieve a bottle of water. "You have walked three hundred forty steps" droned the pedometer, hooked on 7's denim shorts.
In that moment I regretted the daily stress relief ritual I began when school ended, that once-a-day vitamin of happy moods and summer nights, the before bed bowl of chocolate ice cream. Pop! The broad beige button at my waist flew off my low-rise khaki cut-offs and into the street. Now, if you've ever worn those low-rise pants, you know they can't stay up without that button. Letting that button fly is like pressing the red Eject Button on any space ship. The body's gonna feel that cool air, and there's no going back. The shorts started sliding down my hips, revealing ratty pink cotton underwear. I grabbed them and hiked them up as far as they would go and started rummaging around my pack for a safety pin or a piece of Avon jewelry I could alter to use as a Pants Saving Device. Nothing.
"You have walked three hundred sixty steps." The boys weren't aware of my dilemma. They walked in a circle, drinking water, counting steps one by one.
"Hey! Please give me the pedometer, ok? I need something to hold my pants up." I held out my hand and 7 unhooked it from his pocket. I fastened it to the front of my shorts, smack in the middle, in place of the button, and took a few steps up and down the hill to test the security. Alright! Back in business! We hiked the rest of the hill, past the porta potty where construction beams sat in a pile waiting for building permits, past the Japanese garden with three serene Buddhas facing a wall of trickling water, past the house with two pitbulls simmering behind a heavy wooden fence.
The pedometer spoke sporadically, unsure of how to operate from the belly-button of an Avon Lady, and as we passed the light blue house with the crow's nest tower, it began to play accordion music, Camptown Races, for the first time. It wasn't a pleasant sound, loud with echos and scratches like a recording from the 1940's with none of the charm. I stopped and fiddled with the buttons to get it to Please God stop. It stopped.
Six houses later, on the doorstep of a whitewashed clapboard mini-mansion with a Mercedes, BMW, and Land Rover laid out like gilded knick-knacks in the brick drive, as a tiny woman dressed in Chinese red silk pajamas opened the stained glass door and I handed over an Avon brochure, the pedometer auditioned again. Ta Ra Ra Boom Dee-Ay, in full-on accordion rhythmic electric glory, emanated from my belly button and the giggles behind me grew.
"No, 7, no!" 9 tried to reach over and cover 7's mouth with his flat hand, but it was too late. The pedometer music triggered the inevitable, the perfect playground song for a slacked-pants momma, always sung to the tune of Ta Ra Ra Boom Dee-Ay.
Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay
I'll take your pants away!
If you're still standing there
I'll take your underwear!
Just two more weeks until school starts. Just two more weeks until school starts. Just two more weeks until school starts....
8:49:07 AM 
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