Free American Thighs by Jill Conner Browne Page B

quickly worked out our own personal set of cheers reserved especially for these, our two favorite Mets.
    â€œMOO-OO-OO-OOKIE! MOOKIE! MOOK! MOOK! MOOK!” was pretty fun to yell, no matter what he happened to be doing at the time. “Keith Bodie” did not exactly lend itself with the same phonetic ease as did “Mookie” to the creation of a catchy one-liner, but we did come up with one that made us, and, we like to think, him, happy as well. Whenever he came up to bat, we could be counted on for a rousing round of “HIT ’EM IN THE TEETH, KEITH!”
    But our favorite all-purpose cheer—the one that we could, did, and still do enthusiastically employ whenever a qualified candidate pops up on the field—evolved out of that initial realization that there are, happily, some guys who do look hot in a baseball uniform.
    Rhyming as it does with that one phrase so overworked by the guy part of the crowd, you can really feel free to let loose with it just about anytime during the course of the game, confident that the untrained guy-ears in your vicinity will not discern the difference between their shouts of “GOOD EYE!” and your own of “GOOD THIGHS!” It’ll change how you feel about baseball, I promise. O-o-o-o-oh, hunny, YES, do take me out to that ball game!
    Trolling
    Sigh. At one time, that term meant that our jeans were tight ON PURPOSE and we LIKED ’em that way—wouldn’t have ’em any OTHER way and they didn’t seem at all uncomfortable, which is so incomprehensible now. It meant staying not just up but out until it was time for breakfast—and thinking it was just sooo much FUN. The only way we would do that today is if we were sitting by somebody’s deathbed, and even so, it would have to be the deathbed of somebody we either liked a whole lot or from whom we anticipated inheriting a massive fortune—which would, of course, qualify them for a top spot in the first category.
    For some of us, it often meant smoking cigarettes, and for others, perhaps, on occasion, there was even the inhalation of assorted other combustibles. It almost always meant the consumption of adult beverages, even though it might be a few years until the law would consider us adults and decades before our mothers would. Occasionally, it meant that considerably more than the minimum daily requirement of alcohol would be consumed, but we were going to sleep all day the next day anyway so that hardly mattered.
    I don’t think DUIs were even invented until around 2003—you never heard of anybody getting a ticket much less hauled off to jail. (I can’t imagine why it took so long for this law to be enforced—were they waiting to reach a certain body count or what?)
    It definitely meant talking to strangers. This was actually our target demographic—I mean, why would we want to talk to people we already knew? We already KNEW them and had apparently rejected them—otherwise we would be out on a date with them instead of out trolling, right? Duh.
    Trolling was pretty much a catchall word for going out to do as many things our mothers had told us repeatedly NOT to do as we could possibly squeeze into an evening. It is a wonder any of us are alive to testify to this. I am sure there are droves of Larva (persons under the age of forty) who are still out thereactively engaging in at-risk behaviors—and they (not unlike us) think that the MAIN, if not the only, thing they are risking is the ire and/or heart health of their mamas. The ones who do survive (like us) will live to shudder at the memories of the risks they took—but that’s many years and many risks away now.
    For those of us who have survived the bankrupting of our youths, trolling has taken on a different meaning—although it, too, is not altogether danger-free. Today, it means our pants are baggy enough to be entirely comfy and they may even expose our knee-bags. It means,