The Time We Didn't Play Well with Others

We were enjoying a family meal full of odd anatomy and sex questions, sarcastic verbal abuse, and laughter that makes you fall out of your seat the other night. I'm not sure how we got to the point of discussing farts, but we did. It may have been after Favorite Son let one fly that truly should have soiled everything within a 5 mile radius of his butt. Good thing we don't have a nuclear power plant in the kitchen, or the cores would have melted.

This got us to once again remind our children of the story of how we got expelled from Lamaze class.

You see, when I was pregnant with Favorite Son, the rush for me to get home from work and then get dinner in time to make it to Lamaze class clear on the other side of town was terrible. Thus we would often grab a quick bite on the way.

One night we stopped at a Taco Bell (I know... it's nasty, but we were young then). We ate a quick meal of something they claimed was Mexican inspired food and dashed off to class.

When we got there, we were allowed time to mingle for a few minutes and then the instructor got down to business. Tonight we were going to work on relaxation breathing.

Great, I could use that every day! Hubby and I were anxious to see how we could relax.

The instructor told us to spread out within the room with our partners and sit on the floor. We were then told to sit with our legs spread out in a "V" shape facing our partner. Got it! So far so good.

Then we had to hold hands. This was a little tougher as I was reaching out over an ever-growing belly and trying not to pull a muscle in a vital part of my hoochie that I would certainly need for the upcoming birthing festivities. Still no problem. We held hands and awaited the next important instruction to this relaxation technique.

If you have a good mental image thus far, you can imagine that sitting on the floor like this is not particularly comfortable to start with, especially if you are very pregnant and your spouse has the flexibility of an ironing board. Still we played along and tried to be good students. This method was certainly vital to the proper birth of our first child.

Next instruction was to help your partner stretch by taking turns pulling with your arms and sort of having a mini tug of war over your "V"d out leg space. Yeah, okay, this still isn't terribly relaxing.

Final instruction was to now relax "every muscle in your body" as your partner pulled you forward. Uh-oh. Here comes the problem. There is one specific muscle that I certainly don't want to relax after eating at Taco Bell. Great sick minds think alike, and my Hubby also realizes that if he unclenches that muscle, there will be some serious issues in the room.

We both start giggling, and it gets progressively worse as the instructor is repeatedly saying "Now, just relax every muscle in your body." Every time she speaks we start to laugh a little louder and soon can't control ourselves at all. Well, we did control that one muscle.

Our sense of humor was not shared by the teacher and she stopped her mantra long enough to tell us that we were disrupting class for the rest of the students who were being serious in their efforts. She then made us continue our exercises in the hall where we wouldn't disturb others.

That was fine with us because in the hall we finally got to relax every muscle.