Rip the Sky of Ink And Gold

I.

Miss Sasha: Mom, I'm working off a lot of kid karma.
Tata: What are you talking about, sweetheart?
Miss Sasha: I just spent the last hour scrubbing crayon off the TV.
Tata: Really? Didja use Brillo?
Miss Sasha: I think this makes up for some of the things I did as a kid.
Tata: As little kids go, you were very good, so it was a real surprise when you went totally bad later.
Miss Sasha: What about the time I wrote all over the walls?
Tata: You drew a city out of the letters of your name. That was how I knew you were smart.
Miss Sasha: Gotta go! Panky colored that TV in.

II.

Tata: I am stupendously fat. Hormonal eating is my job! What can I do?
Doctor: So, what medications are you taking daily?
Tata: None.
Doctor: Besides calcium, what medications do you take?
Tata: I can't make me take pills so I eat lots of cheese and make my own yogurt, which is less personal than it sounds -

The doctor has known me a long time. He is trying to give me a way to break through my terrible lies.

Doctor: You were just in physical therapy. What drugs did they give you?
Tata: None. I refused. They looked at me just like you are. I told them exercise is always the answer.
Doctor: Exercise is the answer for - uh - lots of things.
Tata: Right, so about my being fat -
Doctor: Why are you here?
Tata: Because it's been a year since my last hilarious pap smear.
Doctor: Already? How time flies.

III.

The unnamed university's gym dot the landscape, and none is as dotty as the one across the street from the library where I work. At the end of physical therapy, I emailed the gym's gatekeeper-dude about my fervent desire use the elliptical for fifteen minutes every day, but it was summer, the gym was closed and he was all like You wouldn't want me to lose my job, would you? Well, now that you fucking mention it, I'm trying to decide what sport I can become world champion of so I can sidle up to a Sports Illustrated reporter and declare what a douchebag you are. So I waited. Summer passed. Th gym opened. I appeared in the gym and presented myself to the gatekeeper, who ushered me to his student assistant, who was very broad.

Tata: I need a Fitcheck sticker. Whaddo I gotta do?
Justin: Here is the form. Here is a pencil.
Tata: Name, department, phone, relationship to the university... no heart condition... no strokes... not a 55 year old man or - what?
Justin: We just want you to know the - um -
Tata: The risks? Your form has just reminded me that having had a hysterectomy makes me a sexual suspect.
Justin: You have to know how to use - um -
Tata: The equipment properly because I'm more than 20 lbs. above what the insurance indexes say I should be? Exactly. Are the machines free around 11?
Justin: It's first come, first served.
Tata: At 11? Eleven thirty?
Justin: Between 1 and 3.
Tata: You can barely breathe, can you?
Justin: [coughs up a furball.]

Call it a hunch, but I suspect I might be his mom's age, and he'd rather chew off his own foot before answering the question, "Should Mom spend a little more time on the stationary bike?"