You lose, loser

So one thing I've learned is never challenge an Olympic athlete to a duel of awesomeness. You will not prevail, even if you're sporty and mostly awesome. How do I know this? I will tell you now, reader. 

As part of my black belt training, I took an adult gymnastics class to help enhance my gravity-defying skillz. My older son is heavily involved in gymnastics at a world class gym; his coaches are ex-Olympians. Like Atlanta 1996. And they were my coaches for this class of adult has-beens. Which was painful on several levels, one of which was that I am three heads taller than both of them. They are tiny awesome man-gymnasts.

So I did the class, worked very hard on my excellent gymnastics moves that were probably historical just from my height, and had fun. Made sure the coaches knew that the class was an enhancement to my black beltosity. One day, at the end of class, Andrei (oh yeah, Russian awesome tiny man-gymnasts) asked what it takes to become a black belt. Not wanting to give away all the black belt secrets, I told him only about the general training timeline. Then he asked to see some moves. Well, if there's one thing I have, audience, it's moves. Serious, awesome ones.

I jumped up and showed him a complicated spinning jump kick. He was all, "I think I could do that." I threw it down with a kind of smiling snorty noise. The noise said, "Whatever, tiny awesome gymnast. You are so not on my level of black belt skill." (It was a really articulate, feeling-injected snort.) So he jumped up and shook out his legs like he's not the fittest, most ripped person ever, and did the same kick as I did, ten times more awesomely.

That hurt, audience. So I re-committed to my ego preservation and did another, more difficult kick, kind of pretending that I just gave him an easy one first, to help him save face when I out-awesomed him. He watched closely, all kinesthetically-super-aware-like, and then ripped out a perfect, very ass-kicking jump spin heel crescent. With a lot of style.  

After I pulled out my final big gun, which he proceeded to crush with his tiny-gymnast-turned-karate-master moves, I gave up and shrunk to the floor like a slug sprinkled with salt (give me a moment, I just cracked myself up there with my spectacular simile---and alliterative aside---somebody stop me before I throw in a double entendre! Oh God, I kill me sometimes). Andrei was all smug, like how you'd be if you were an Olympic athlete that out-karateed a mom of two. (That last bit was a bitter way for me to lessen his achievement, and for me to look less non-awesome.) 

It was at that point of lowest feeling that I rose up, felt my awesomeness re-emerge in spite of the recent humiliating kick-off, and told that tiny awesome gymnast what was what.

I said, "I'm taller than you."

Wha-pow!