Jazzy, Tucker, Bonita, And Other Stories Of Laziness

Today I am mourning the loss of my fitness regime. Please, could you tell me, have you seen my will power? Perhaps it is in your back yard. Did you check the mail box?

I set out for a two-mile jog today but came home after kicking pebbles on the sidewalk for a scant mile. All day long I wished I was out running and then the minute I was there I felt like eating a slice of watermelon and tanning my freckles instead. My will power really is the rudest thing.

Though, had I not wimped out at the quarter mile mark today I might never have found out the real names of the three horses who live at my favorite house on D Street.  I was feeding them tufts of tall grass at the fence when two little girls in bright pink stopped to toss their hair and adjust their backpacks.

"Do you know their names?" the freckled one asked me, her braces sparkling in the sun. We were kindred spirits, me and Freckles, I could tell.

"Only the names I made up for them," I said.

I'd been calling them Estelle, all three of them, on account of Estelle is just the kind of name you would give to a classy horse.

"I know their real names!" she said. "That one's Jazzy, the brown one's Tucker, and that one over there is Bonita."

"Bonita," I said, letting it roll around in my will-powerless head as the horses nibbled at my fingers.

Then I handed the girls the last of the grass in my hands and I walked my lazy butt home and thought a little bit about purple lilacs.

There is something awry in my brain parts, is all there is to it.