How I know that Lob has fabulous breasts

I thought I'd try an eye-catching title. Did it work?

I'm going to tell the story of how Lob got (in her opinion) the best compliment of her life. Indeed, I believe it has been a lifetime highlight for her, other than her wedding day and the birth of each of her children, and all that kind of stuff that she has to say comes first. (If we were asking me, my favorite highlight from Lob's life was the time that representatives from McDonald's came to our high school and presented her with a shiny, puffy, McDonald's jacket on stage in front of our entire school. But this is the story of her favorite moment, not mine.)

Back in the days before Lob's body had experienced the joy of child-bearing, she and her husband, Mr. Lob, heard about a very enticing proposition. A well-known local adult entertainment establishment was offering classes to women - classes on how to dance. And also on how to take off your clothes. That's right, stripper classes.
"I want to do that!", Lob said, "Great!" said Mr. Lob, "I'll sign you up! It'll be your birthday present! It's the gift that keeps on giving!" At least this is how I imagine the conversation went. That last part I definitely heard Mr. Lob say myself.
Now this would all be well and good, except for one thing. Did Lob plan on going to the stripper class by herself? No, she didn't. Did Mr. Lob mind buying his wife two tickets to help ensure her attendance by enabling her to bring a friend? No, he didn't. And which friend did she have in mind? One that is already confident in her sexy dance moves? Perhaps a friend that had a life-time aspiration of one day becoming a stripper, and she was just waiting for someone to come along and offer her a class? Nooo. No, no, she targeted me. As someone who 1) knows she can't dance, and 2) is not comfortable walking around all nekkid in a locker room, let alone in a large open room full of strangers, I was less than excited about the proposition of combining these two tasks together. In fact, I gave her an emphatic "no", and stated that there was no possible way that she would ever find me agreeing to the stripper class. Sorry.

But, Lob and Mr. Lob are wily, cunning creatures. The bought the tickets far in advance, so that they had plenty of time to wheedle away at me. Lob turned on her charm, used her sweet voice, and begged me to attend the class with her. And she used her birthday against me! "Please, please! It's all I want for my birthday! Can't you just do this for me - for my birthday? I don't want anything else! I can't go if you don't go!" blah, blah, blah. Eventually, she wore me down. After being assured that stripping wasn't actually required, I agreed to go, and vowed to myself that I would keep this secret forever.

Fast forward to maybe a week before the class. I have told no one. Also, I have invited Lob to join my co-ed soccer team. We are all sitting around having a drink after a game one sunny afternoon when Lob introduces herself to the team this way, "So did Jenn tell ya'll that we are taking a stripper class together next week?" So the number of people who know my secret has instantly gone from 0 (other than the Lobs) to all the guys on my soccer team. I have to say, that though I was a little mortified, it was one of the more interesting studies of the old "telephone" game I have ever witnessed. Remember the game when you see how the message gets twisted as it goes around the circle? Well, it was like an instantaneous version of that. Because while the guys at one end of the table heard her correctly, and put down their beers to gape, the guys at the middle of the table, were saying "What? Naked women? What?!" and the fellows at the opposite end suddenly picked up with, "Naked Brazilian women?! Where? What? What's going on?!"
Lob knows how to get a man's attention.

So, I sucked up my misgivings and I went to the class with my friend. I even got a t-shirt. And it wasn't as bad as it seemed. The parking lot was full of minivans - women there to learn something to bring home to their husbands. Or whomever they happen to bring home at night, or maybe some of them just wanted to dance in front a mirror at home by themselves - I don't know. But no men were allowed inside. We were divided into groups, and went around to four different stations where we were instructed by different strippers. Oh, and the bar was open, and we were given two drink tickets, so I immediately cashed that in - I needed it. We did have one woman who got drunk and got in trouble for grabbing one of the strippers - but most of the people were nice. At least I think they were - I don't really remember... I was probably trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

The only one of the stations that I could at all was the one where we learned to crawl. Because, anyone can crawl! It's not really dancey. I think this was Lob's favorite part (other than her compliment), because this is how the crawling instructions began: (if you are related to me, stop reading now. I mean it. Why are you still reading? Skip down a paragraph.) "Everyone get down like you are getting it from behind." Immediately, every woman in our group hit the ground, all in identical poses, with eyes still on the instructor, waiting for the next command. I was the only one left standing. Lob says I was looking around at the group as if to say, "Can someone just pretend for a second that they don't know exactly what is going on here?"
Oh, her other next favorite part? I think it was with the same instructor. We were learning some kind of belly wave thing. I don't know what it was. I couldn't do it. You could wave up, or wave down, and she was telling us that some people could do one and not the other, and that if you were having trouble, try the other way and you'd probably be able do that one. But she pointed me out and said, "You just can't do it at all, can you?" I was really not stripper material. Big surprise.

There was a grand finale but I missed it. Actually, one thing I had been assured when I agreed to go was that I could leave early. Lob and I were coaching a girls soccer team, and they had a game that day. I left early from my strip class to go mold young girls, while Lob stayed behind to further her stripping skills. At the end, they put each group on the stage, one at a time, and let them show off their newly learned skills for the entire rest of the group. I didn't know this was coming, but I cannot express to you how thankful I was to hear that I had missed it. I would probably have tried to spend the entire time crawling across the stage, which Lob told me, due to the surface of the stage, injured one of the women in our group (because you don't just crawl - you crawl and slide - it just wasn't so slick), or maybe I would have tried to stand behind the biggest person I could find and hoped that no one noticed me. Anyway, I missed it, but I also missed Lob's magic moment. Because up to this point in time, there had been no baring of body parts. Sure, a bra or two had been exposed during the "how to be sexy while taking off your shirt" class, but nothing more. One of the strippers noticed this, and challenged the students. Drunk Grabby Woman and Lob obliged her, and like the pros they were trying to be, tossed off their tops. And that's when one of the professional strippers looked at Lob and said, "You have fabulous breasts." And as Lob explained to me, "and she's a stripper, so she knows!"

And she was about as happy as I have ever seen her.

Meanwhile, I brought home my certificate of participation, and hid it somewhere in the aparment I was sharing with my friend, Dolly. Dolly is someone that would refuse to attend a bachelorette party that had anything to do with strippers, out of principle, but I had broken the news of my class to her somewhere along the way. Sometime later, while I was out of town, Dolly had her family over for dinner at our place. She always cleaned up and re-decorated a bit before having company, and do you know what she thought would make a good decoration for her parents and brother? My stripping certificate. Which she paired brilliantly with me Bible trivia trophy. (That's right, I won a Bible trivia trophy. Thanks not to any studying or voluntary youth group participation of my own, but the fact that I attended a school that required Bible classes. I knew my stories!) And when her family did not notice these tokens right away, she enthusiastically pointed them out. Yes, it's the gift that keeps on giving.

I remember almost nothing of what they taught us, but Lob, ever the dedicated (curve-ruining) student, wrote it all down as soon as she got home. I hope that you and your fabulous breasts have enjoyed that, Lob. And again, I'm sorry they had no pole - I know it was disappointing.