Feel the fear, but do it anyways...

The LuLu Chronicles

LuLu-ism #12: A cowgirl hanging off a bike seat is not the worst thing in the world.

This morning as I was plotting out my bike route it occurred to me I was trying to decide in which route would I encounter the fewest people. Now, I’m a pretty passionate people person, however, not so much when I’m on LuLu. In the back of my mind, I’m wondering what people may be thinking of this middle-age, over-weight woman riding a bike with her cowgirl hanging off her seat (yeah, I’ve got the widest seat known to man on LuLu, but my cowgirl hasn’t met a seat she doesn’t mush around and hang off like a yarn-ball curtain fringe.) I care what people think. And what gets my goat is that I care what those kids on those yellow school buses think when they pass me from behind. Arrg! Suddenly, I’m a middle-schooler again!

Why do I care? Well, my imagination has those pimpled-squirts taking pictures of me with their cell phones and passing it around at lunch. Then I have them making up little songs about the fat lady on the bike. Then I think that teen girls are looking at themselves in school bathrooms and praying they never have a cowgirl like that old lady riding that pink bike.

How many of us have not done something we enjoy because we’re afraid of what someone may think? Like, it’s a hot as molasses afternoon, but you wear long-sleeves because you don’t want people to see that your upper arms are large enough to be used as a tablecloth? Or we don’t get into the pool afraid, well, everything about that situation.

It’s not only our weight, its our teeth, or our hair, or lack of education, or our clothes or whatever! Caring what others think of us is so imbedded into our fiber, we at times, don’t do what we love or what would give us joy because we fear what someone may think; even those we don’t know, like whiny teens on a school bus. We don't want them thinking less of us, or heavens to Betsy, laughing at us.

I say, let’s stop that foolishness. Put on that sleeveless dress and let the arms flap wherever they want. Tug on that bathing suit and splash all those little toothpicks out of the pool. And, ride your bike where you darn well please.

Lesson learned: Life is simply too short not to do something that gives you joy.

Later,

deb