The Blues

The Strongest Woman on Earth

On August 17, 2010, in Family, Life, by Rosie

There are people in this world that will come and go. There are folks that will annoy you to the point of oblivion, peeps that you love with all your being, those that you develop a crush on for a time. There are even special someones you might take a bullet for (provided it’s painless, and you don’t have to join the Secret Service) or others that you will forgive anything.

There are friends that can cook or sing, make you laugh, burden you, help you relax. There are relatives that cloud your aura, create a panic, or sit with you when you’re sick or downtrodden. Some rellos can fix your car, fill your teeth, give you an injection, oversee your legal documents or balance your books.

Then there are relatives who can pick you up.

Actually render you airborne!

Hoist you from the cushion of your buttocks, grasp you to the girth of their rippling pectoral muscle, and leverage your flailing limbs to the sky.

I’m proud of my relatives. I boast about them online — sure, I may disguise that as mocking fiction, but hey? I find it hard to express myself. I chat about them with friends, and I love to hear about their achievements and whatnots (not so much about their whatnots!) It’s amazing to be related to such a group of talented, dynamic individuals, and in appreciation of our diversity, I’d like to introduce you to:

the strongest woman alive!

She’s younger than me. She’s not in the Guinness Book of Records or starring in body building magazines or in movies opposite Sly Stalone. (She couldn’t. Unless she was playing Sylvester’s granddaughter!) She doesn’t appear as though she is the strongest woman alive, her talent hidden deftly behind beautiful grooming and luscious curvature.

She believes that had she been born in days of Olden Times — where freakishly talented and S.T.R.O.N.G women were not lauded — she may have ended up in a travelling show, her unfixed forward jaw and armfuls of tattoos complimenting her unbelievable SHOWS OF STRENGTH.

But in 2010, she’s integrated. She might be working next to you, biceps straining beneath your shared desk space, but you’d never know it. She might descend next to you in the lift. Or stand near you in the train. She might even live in your neighbourhood, but because she’s blends in with the fabric of life, you’re just not aware.

Until the day you’re standing in line, waiting for your kilo of prosciutto, your buffalo mozza and your bunch of basil, and you’re lifted up by one hand, watching the queue from above.

Although she’s not random like this. She picks her target, but when a lift is ON, the outcome is very, very funny.

Nigh on 30 years, I’ve seen the strongest woman alive:

• swim an entire reservoir in the middle of winter when her parents told her not to get wet

• swing from ropes across rivers, singlehandedly

• pick up her 100 kilo, 70-odd year old grandfather (no play on the word ‘odd’ there!)

• and swing him about a bit!

• pick up her mother and whiz her about.

• pick up her nearly 80-year old grandma and nurse her like a baby.

• rock her, and spin her and rock her again.

• maintain the frontage of a modern, attractive, lady-about-town, all the while harbouring this ability to lift and spin. Bodies, crates, groups of people, but not cars (I guess that only happens with vampires, and as far as I know, this relative is not supernatural).

We applaud her power. Not only is it a physical attribute, the strongest woman alive also has strength of character and a loving stronghold within the family. One thing I do know is that when I’m walking down an alley with the strongest woman alive by my side, no one will call me a (clean and) jerk. And no one would dare snatch my handbag.

And if we couldn’t lift the varmint out of the way? We could lick him/her with our tongue — a network of very, very strong muscles indeed!