For three years now, my organization has provided the opportunity for a tug of war. This is a wonderful thing for me. You see, while I don’t do finance bro shit, I perform a function in a bank. There are not many power lifters and stuff. And I’m not sure what my body composition is, but I like it more every day and some people will find that scary.

So I explain a little height strategy, and I’m the anchor which means I’m at the end. And it starts. And golly gee my team doesn’t seem stacked. I can see over people’s heads very plainly. Most of the taller people are slender. It is a stale mate. For what feels like 60 seconds, no one moves. And it’s very hard to pull something very hard for 60 seconds. Think about the last time you struggled at failure with a pull up.

And I guess I am like this because there is no caffeine and no preworkout at all. I decide to pull harder and for some reason that means words are going to come out of my big stupid mouth and I hear myself shout

“ARE YOU TIRED YET?”

It was a rhetorical question. My team and their team heard it equally. I shouted it in that voice that’s that combo of my mother’s vocals when she’s had enough and my father’s willingness to give himself a hernia in the name of masculine energy and my own zest for learning that life tastes better with the right amount of elbow grease. It cuts the room. But then I started pulling really hard. And I’m gonna need to kiss my own ass for a bit because

golly gee the tables sure seemed to turn. You see, I think there’s a good chance that I’ve asked myself that question the most in the last two years out of anyone else in that room. And I know I’m solid. And the rock’s height. And when you put all that together

I saw my form give up and I still pulled. I heard the room, and suddenly there was a LOT of slack in the rope after a good tug and the guy in front of me was too tired or too surprised or both to realized he’d essentially dropped the rope,. so I grabbed that rope in front of him and began tugging

“ARE, YOU, TIRED YET?“

The guy in front of me was about 5’6 and I saw he was more balanced on the rope than pulling. I figured fuckit, and leaned back and pulled. I pulled expecting resistance because if there wasn’t any I was going to summersault.

That guy fall backwards into me. The rope was mine. That guy fell into my lap looking up at me from a spiderman angle and went, I shit you not, “You’re so strong“

And anime style, I shit you not I smiled and offered him my sore arm to help him up.

We lost the next round and honestly I’m a little mad because I could have pulled harder, but the number of people who came up to me to say good work for my being a pain in the ass in a team game was kinda vivifying. I sort of wish I gave a bigger deal about being really strong because I may have just peaked, and I’ll keep lifting, but it was nice while it lasted. I could tell I was succesful because a girl who I thought was clearly younger than me left the night by saying “when you get to my age recovery is a big deal” and I proceeded to run 6 miles because fomo is weird and I’d regret not