Babies and Binkies  Part 2 
By Connor McCloud Khengiskhan@hotmail.com



The alarm went off like everyday around 6:00 am, and like usual I hit the
snooze button at least a half dozen times. I really wasn't upset when I woke
up, in fact I wasn't even thinking about my loss to Kathie just hours ago and
until Kathie walked out from the bathroom. She stretched in front of the
mirror, admiring her increasingly muscular and hard body and then she looked
back at me. She perched herself up on her toes, flexing her very impressive
calf muscles and legs at me just to give me a little show.

"How do they look honey?" Kathie asked.

"They look great I answered, better than I have ever seen them," I answered in
all honesty, her legs did look awesome.

"Good enough to knock you off the bed!" she laughed looking back at me.

"That was last night, just a one time thing," I replied," I think the next
time will be different."

"You really think so?" she asked," I think you male ego is geting the best of
you. Regardless of what you may think, I'm stronger now than I have ever been.
Personally, I think I'm stronger than you, but I know you don't want to
believe that. Any time you want a rematch you let me know, I'm ready anytime."

"I do want a rematch, soon. What do you say we try a couple of other strength
tests as well, seeing your so confident now. Arm wrestling for example would
be fun," I said.

"You're on sweety. We'll armwrestle tonight, and the loser gets the baby, who
incidently is crying right now. We'll talk more later, don't worry I'll get my
little girl, you just think about tonight and how you will feel when you
lose!" she said happily and walked out of the room.

We each got ready and went to work as usual, Kathie only called me once during
the day to taunt me about her victory and to predict victory in this evenings
encounter. We were both having fun with this, but there was definitely an
underlying seriousness to this that neither one of us talked about. Kathie
certainly was on a mission that I had never witnessed before to show off her
new found muscle, and I was trying not to let my wife beat me in these
physical contests. I had a hard time thinking that my wife was stronger than I
was, but she had certainly sent my flying off the bed last night. I ended up
thinking that she must have gotten lucky, and that tonight would be an
entirely different story, there was no way she was going to beat me at arm
wrestling.

I arrived home from work around 6 pm and we spent the night doing mundane
chores and doing general clean up. I went on the computer for a little while
and played some everquest, which Kathie thinks is totally juvenile, but I like
it. We ended up not talking about tonights scheduled event until around 10 pm,
when we sat down together to watch some TV.

"I'm ready when you are for our arm wrestling match sweets," she said
nicely,"I think you're in for an unpleasant surprise. I hope you won't get all
weird about losing? Can your ego handle it?"

"I think you're nutty to think you will win, but I'm ready right now. Loser
gets the baby if she cries tonight, that's the deal right?" I asked.

"You got it lover, let's do this," she answered excitedly.

We lied down on the floor facing each other in the living room. There was a
definite nervous and anxious feeling in the air, that from my perspective,
should not have been there. Kathie rolled up her sleeve, smiling as she did
it, revealing a well developed upper arm, which was certainly more defined
than ever. I in turn rolled up my sleeve and flexed my arm for her, which
although not as defined was clearly larger than my wife's arm.

Kathie held up her right hand and motioned for me to do the same. As our right
hands clasped together, our left hands also met, which caught me by surprise.
How did Kathie know to hold our left hands together, she had apparently done
this before. We felt each other out for a few minutes and then with no more
than a nod to each other we started. For a few moments we didn't move at all,
I was certainly surprised by her strength, but still felt I could win. I tried
to apply a little more pressure, but was disappointed to see her counteract
with pressure of her own, keeping us pperfectly even. We both started to push
harder now, Kathie wasn't looking at me, but looking at our hands in deep
concentration. I felt my arm growing tired as I maintained my pressure and was
trying to decide when to give at one last push for the win. The match was at
least 5 minutes old now, and we were both grunting and trying our best to win,
it meant so much to each of us. Slowly, I began to move Kathie's arm down
towards the ground, and seeing victory, I gave it everything I had. A few
moments later, her hand hit the ground.

Although I had technically won, she had won the all important mental edge. Her
performance showed that her arms were equal to mine in strength, which didn't
need to be mentioned, she knew. Kathie didn't say anything about the match,
but held up her left arm to go again.

"You want to do it again?" I asked.

"Of course, that last match was no landslide honey, either one of could have
won. Are you telling you don't want to try with our left arms? What kind of a
competitor are you?" she asked looking hard into my eyes.

"OK, I'll just beat you again," I said, not really believing what I was
saying.

We locked up and started right away. This match started the same as the last,
no real movement at all, but there was a difference. I was physically drained
from our right arm encounter, and I was having a hard time getting the inner
strength to continue. Several minutes into our second match, Kathie began to
take control. Her left arm, now flexed and straining, was impressive to see.
Her bicep was even bigger than I thought, and glancing at my arm, it looked
bigger than mine. Slowly Kathie began to force my arm towards the floor, and
as hard as I pushed, I could not stop her advance. Moments later, she slowly
lowered my hand to the floor. Her victory smile stretched ear to ear.

"Did you ever think you would see the day when I beat you in arm wrestling?
I've always wanted to do that with you," Kathie exclaimed happily.

"I can't believe you beat me Kat. I never thought you could win, you are
certainly stronger than I thought," I replied heartbroken and feeling terribly
humiliated.

"Let me ask you honey, seriously, who do you think is stronger me or you?" she
asked suddenly.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked with a confused look.

"Well, overall, who do you think is stronger. I don't mean anything more or
less. Take our legs for example, who's legs are stronger?" she asked.

"I guess yours might be a little stronger, but I'm not sure," I said quietly,
knwoing the real truth but not wanting to admit it.

"Why don't we make a little checklist, it might be fun," she said jumping up
and grabbing paper and a pencil. Fun for who I thought to myself.

Kathie started to write down all kinds of different aspects of strength while
I sat there and stated at her in disbelief. She was talking as she wrote down
all kinds of stuff, but I was zoned out looking at her muscles and wondering
when this mutiny took place. It took her about ten minutes of thinking this
out until she stopped writing and looked up at me.

"OK honey listen to this. I figure that I have to give you your props so to
speak. You can more than likely still lift more weight than me. I could hold
my own with your legs, but upper body you could probably still lift more. I'm
giving you that. So why can I beat you at arm wrestling? I think the answer is
while you are stronger in a one aspect, I'm stronger in another way. Follow
close now. I was thinking about what kind of different tests of strength, you
know arm wrestling, leg wrestling, and then I decided that there is no better
test than just wrestling. That tests every aspect of strength, fitness, and
even mental and physical toughness. What better way for us to compete and test
or physical dominance. You following along so far?" she asked.

"Yup, keep going you lunatic," I answered.

"Whatever. So I figure that there are certain aspects to wrestling and if we
decide who is better at each we can decide who the physically dominant one
here is. Then, if you are up for it, we will wrestle to decide who our
marriage champ is. How's that sound?" she asked, with more excitement in her
voice than I have ever heard.

"So you want to discuss this list of yours and then wrestle to see if your
little science expiriment is accurate?" I asked smiling.

"Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. OK, ready I've broke it down in a
whole bunch of areas. You have to be honest now, or this won't work, so even
if you hate to admit things you have to. Can you do that?" she asked very
seriously.

"Sure honey," I answered. I had to see where she was going and then decide on
how truthful I was really willing to be.

We talked for a long time about our list, and not without arguing about at
least half. I was surprsingly honest about everything, and it actually felt
good to discuss these things, it made us feel closer and opened up
conversation that had never been there before. There were no ties, so we
fought over the winner of certain categories, but the final outcome went like
this. I had won overall strength, upper body strength, and the weight
advantage. Kathie had won flexibility, lower body strength, hand and wrist
strength (which she won by beating me in mercy several times when I wouldn't
give her the nod), endurance, quickness, mental toughness, and physical
toughness. The mental toughness and physical toughness were hard to
acknowledge, but I knew they were true, Kathie had a tough life and was very
mentally tough because of that. I gave her physical toughness because of her
amazing tolerance for pain, which many woman have, and because she grew up a
scrapper and had won many fights growing up by all accurate accounts.

So Kathie had come out on top 7-3, which she was happy about not because she
had won, but because she knew I had been honest. It was decided that night
that the following night we would wrestle to see who the stronger, tougher,
more dominant person was. We both talked openly about how much we wanted to
win and knew it would be a very physical and tough match. Kathie said plainly
that she didn't care if she hurt me, at least not while we wrestled, and told
me to take it seriously or I would get hurt. We both knew that the other would
be trying as hard as they could to win and there could be only one winner.
With this on our minds we went to bed without saying more about it, each of us
lost in thought about tomorrow's clash.

To be continued........