A day in the life of a pedicurist/manicurist. Nail worker.

My name is Rose. I fondle people’s hands and feet for a living. You come to the salon, ask for a manicure or a pedicure and the madam, yea that one with a smelly weave, points you to my corner. This sentence is supposed to establish in your mind that I hate her.

6.00am: I wake up to the yowling of several cats. Does anyone know what  cats have to say to each other at this time and why they say it so loudly? Have they all gathered around my tiny house to line dance and practice solfas? It sure sounds like they have.

6.30: You probably think I’m an angry person; I’m not, as evidenced by cats still being existent in Uganda. See, every day at this time, I unchain my bike and ride to the saloon. If I wanted, I’d crush the heads of no less than 20 miaowers as a direct result of their arrogant refusal to get out of my way. Even when I make scary sounds and hand motions to shoo them away, they just stand there and stare at my front tyre. Insolently. Cat dodging has been a regular part of my life for 3 years now.

7.30: I’m reading a magazine, not cleaning the floor or washing towels or disinfecting the tools that I’m going to be digging into hundreds of feet and hands. I just can’t be bothered.

8.30: I’m running around like an ant on fire, trying to find a rolex for MADAM’s breakfast. If she arrives before the rolex, she’ll make me do something totally unexpected and horrifying. The last time I annoyed her, she made me scratch her itchy scalp the whole day.

8.40: The rola guys are still rubbing sleep out of their eyes, transferring it to chapatti dough, picking the cockroaches out of yesterday’s cabbage, which they’re going to use in today’s rolexes, man.

9.00: I return to find two women and one guy sitting in my corner. My tools haven’t been sterilized yet, but ah. People with diseases don’t come to this saloon. I feed the boss, smile sweetly at the customers and throw myself into the job.

yea

9.02: It stinks. This woman’s feet are unbelievably dirty. Cuticles like smegma. She could win an award for these cracks, these fissures at the back of her feet. I admire her ability to plop such monsters into somebody else’s hands.

9.03 and beyond: I do the exact same thing the whole day. Nothing changes. I see feet, I cringe. I see fingers, I cringe. I cut people, I laugh. I dislodge a black piece of unidentifiable matter, I cringe. Yea. That’s how a day in my life goes. Want a manicure?

Unlikely friends in unlikely places

When things go wrong, which they inevitably will at some point because life is a bastard, it helps to be able to afford retail therapy. Greedily accumulating things we don’t really need is all we capitalist babies need to deal with life and its many bumps, right?

Recently, my heart was full of black, clumpy feelings. My stomach felt as if it had been used as a reservoir for tar. I felt no good will whatsoever towards my fellow man and woman. It was a stupid day. A silky voice whispered unto me, “Why not go shopping?” which is how I came to be standing outside the old park.

All the entrances and exits of Uganda’s taxi parks are open markets where you can get things that would normally cost you half your face for cheap. This place is mostly frequented by campus girls and interns- people that don’t usually have a very large margin of disposable income. I say mostly because I’m not a campus chick anymore and I sometimes stare at my bank balance to brighten up my day (ha!) and yet on that not so good day, I found myself in the familiar push, shove, grope, fondle world of the park market.

I’d wedged my purse into my armpit and started to scan the area for cute buyables when I felt somebody fondling my elbow. True to form, I turned with a thunderous scowl and was presented with a playful, slightly familiar face. It was beaming. I opened my mouth to say something incendiary when it hit me who this smiling, elbow fondling idiot was. Zakke!

Back in campus when a modest allowance had to stretch to cover feeding, partying and the regular addition of clothes to my tiny akamwesi half closet (seriously Aka. Stop being cheap. Build bigger closets), Zakke was famous in my circles for having the most beautiful, authentic looking jeans that would tear like cardboard the moment you wore them.We called them SVPs. Scandalously ventilated pants.

I was genuinely excited to see Zakke and his partner again.  I didn’t even give him the long lecture that I normally feel obliged to give men who do such things. When you stop and calmly ask a man what the hell is going through his mind as he feels random, unwilling women up, like some kind of rapist, he becomes very uncomfortable.

Even though I had no desire to own a pair of cardboard pants, I patiently listened to their wild lies about the top quality of their wares. First class! Designer! I didn’t even flinch as one of them whipped out a measuring tape and wound it around my hips in one swift movement.

When I asked why they weren’t in their usual spot, Zakke’s partner shook his head and said, “You know this guy called Musisi”. For a second, it occurred to me to correct them about Musisi’s sex, “She’s no ‘guy’, she’s an awesome woman!” but what did it matter.

After hunting for a kaveera and handing me a pair of pants that I won’t wear until its seams are thoroughly reinforced by my tailor, one of them offered to walk me to my taxi to “protect” my elbow from the abuse that men on the path would doubtless have subjected it to. It was with a big grateful smile that I said yes.

Yes, kindly sir. You may guide me through the blah blah

Get naked. Get splashy.

Swimming is the act of taking most of your clothes off in a public place and flopping into a huge tub filled with over chlorinated water.

Wheeeeee

It is a fun activity that you can do in the sun, rain, in windy conditions and even in the middle of the night if you’re brave. Brave because everybody knows that snakes and crocodiles and other such scary, long, slimy things take residence under pools from 8.00pm onwards.

It does not require much skill to get into swimwear, but it does require effort to keep it on as you’re getting out of the water. Swimming pools enjoy embarrassing people by clinging to their bikini bottoms/ trunks and exposing their buttocks as they attempt to leave the water. This is why you need to carefully rearrange yourself before climbing out and also why people exit pools so slowly. They aren’t trying to be Baywatch, they’re trying to protect their baby-makers from exposure.

For the last two months, all of hell’s hounds have lain on their backs and breathed at us. Vampires have taken over the sun and are trying to see if they can make Ugandans sweat blood. The only way we can fight back is by summersaulting into water and throwing defiant looks at the sun.

The first contact that you have with the cool water fills you with so much benevolence towards your fellow man that not even the sight of a child drooling or a grown man sneezing into the water is enough to make you quickly flop back out of the pool.

Unfortunately, after the first few minutes of cold, unadulterated happiness, the water gets lukewarm and it starts to feel like you’re swimming inside somebody’s stomach, which is when you get out of the pool, carefully, and head for that cold drink that the waitress has just placed on your table.

Swimming also involves a lot of serenity and contented sighing until some blind idiot dives or swims into you, after which you are allowed to unserenely grab their feet to save yourself from drowning and then slap their ribs.

Because there are not so many pools in Kampala, these places can get crowded. It’s perfectly normal to hate everyone who comes in after you, because ugh, they’re mucking up the water with their sweaty bodies, but be careful not to be openly unfriendly or you will be thrown out of the establishment. Hear that, Mina?

Also, it’s okay to be jealous of three year olds that can swim in the deep end like cute little tadpoles, but you have to be very quiet about your indignation or else their mothers will curse you and you’ll feel like a horrible person.

And during those post-lunch hours when you have to eke out a living in a poorly ventilated cubicle, nobody will judge you for bursting into tears in response to the heat. It’s OK to feel sad about your office not being located inside a swimming pool. People, let’s go swimming.

How to grin through ulcers (OR brokness in January)

Brokness: Definition. #1.When you’ve got nothing in your wallet but echoes. #2. One of two circumstances in which anorexia becomes acceptable, the second being when you have a violently greedy housemate; then the anorexia is a survival measure.

Dan Barongo will sue my ass one day

January is the official month of brokness. Everybody knows this. One of the reasons that adults are so determined to have a great time in December is that they know what’s coming. I don’t think there’s a way of surviving the wave of poverty that sweeps the nation during the first month of every year. Even if you save in anticipation of this horribleness, the money will find ways of wriggling out of your careful grip and you will be dirt broke.

I hadn’t expected to be poor last month. According to my careful calculations, moneys were supposed to hit my account on the fifth of January. This gave me the liberty to CUT THROUGH what money I had like a scissor through butter, a knife through a grasshopper, a sickle through morning grass. I raided every shop that I knew for selling pretty things and discovered others. In summary, I exploded my finances all over Uganda, and all was good in my life. Happiness abounded.

This was the state of things until page 5 of 366 came and passed with no notable change in my depleted account. “Huh.”, I said. 7^th came along and I kwasa kwasad myself to the bank teller, happy about the funds that were going to grace my life. To my dismay, there was nothing.

On the 10^th, I walked into my bank with a tough look on my face, a look that said, “If there’s money in the bank, so help it God” but alas, there was none. It was when I phoned the “traitorous fools” to shout at them for standing between me and my right to spend that I was informed that my money had in fact arrived, several weeks earlier.

I walked away from the bank cackling with the hysteria of the financially doomed, just cracking up, trying not to be thrown into the road by the force of my raucous laughter, helplessness and a very comic variety of despair. It hit me- what had happened to that money. I had unknowingly quaffed it. I had exchanged it for fleeting enjoyment and now hunger had come to collect.

On gmail, I said to my BFF, “Kampire, I may as well be dead.” “Because you’re broke?” she asked. “Yea. Maybe I should start killing people for money again. Alternatively, I could go to random restaurants and relieve strangers of their meals with a sharp knife”. She didn’t discourage me.

To my workmate, I said, “Remember how in the morning you said you’d do anything for me to do both yours and my work for the day? How about you give me some money?” Him: LOL. No.

And finally, like every helpless tween on the planet, I said to my father, “Hi daddy. You know I love you, especially the way you’re always so willing to give your children support when they need it. The Bible says fathers give their children loaves of bread when they ask for things to eat, and not stones. I’d really like some bread shaped like 50 bob notes, thanks; which is how I survived death by stupidity.

I come to February skinny and contrite, with strong resolutions and a story.

Limits? What are those?

A stopper is a small metallic or rubber object used to keep women and men who wear jewelry from going insane.

Hi. We're stoppers.

It was invented to reduce and eventually bring a stop to the disturbing noises that would shoot out of people’s mouths when their earrings fell to the ground, especially if they rolled into hard to reach places.

The word stopper is also this week’s metaphor for limit .People usually have limits. Even Eve probably wouldn’t have eaten the forbidden fruit if it had been dangling from the branch of the tree that she and Adam used for toilet.

In order to be considered responsible and likeable members of society, people set limits and follow them. They say, “The next time my boyfriend cheats on me, I’ll donate his liver to the local butchery” or “I won’t eat more than two bars of chocolate at a go” or “It’s not good form to flirt with best friends simultaneously, so I won’t do it”.

However, some people have no limits at all. They’ve got no stoppers to stand in the way of them committing preposterous acts. These people are not to be hated and drowned in Bwaise. They’re to be tolerated, especially if they’re sweet and female and me.

When you’re a kid, in lower primary school, you’re really intolerant of annoying classmates, right? So when a small boy comes and threatens to report you to teacher for saying a bad word, a word that you haven’t said on account of you having been writing your surname over and over on a piece of paper all morning in an attempt to master its spelling so that you won’t suffer during the next exam, you’re not amused. When this pest refuses to go away, you plead with him. “I didn’t. I’ll give you one musibatie at break time. Please don’t report me” and when he leans over to stick his tongue out, you shove your pencil into his nose. Hard. Blood gets everywhere and you hear the teacher mutter, “children just don’t have limits”.

**

It’s a barbeque and an almost scary number of animals have been slaughtered. So many that animal heaven will probably not have enough time to make preparations for the stampede of souls that it’s about to face. You stumble back home from a party at which you ate a piece of cake that must have been made using every intoxicant in the land. Your head is not OK. Your eyes are trying to expand, which is a lot more painful than you thought possible.

When you’re spotted by fussy family members, a mountain of roasted meat is placed before you. Because you need to stay awake, you eat and eat until your body is disgusted by the amount of foreign flesh in it. Your mind clears up enough to ask, “Banaye chick. Don’t you have limits?”

**

After violently smashing your fist into his onions in response to his annoying slowness in opening the car door, a casual war ensues. He hits your bottom with the tips of his uncouthly long finger nails. You pour a handful of sand down the back of his shirt after which he splashes water on your face. This prompts you to drop his phone in the lake. In your head, events are progressing naturally and it’s only when the phone dies that you feel a tiny prick of remorse. Nobody in your party says anything about limits but their faces are oozing disbelief.

Take that! And that!

What?  He shouldn’t have splashed that water.

All this pressure to fall into marriage immediately after graduating. Banaye.

Have you noticed how in the middle of every speech made at a graduation party, marriage is mentioned? It’s the scariest thing. Just as you’re starting to get drunk off all the fabulous stuff being said about you, the speaker throws you into shock by hinting that you’re expected to quickly knot yourself with some boy or girl in order to be considered a social success.

This is all very well, because marriage has its perks, but I want to ask, where do these aunts, uncles, brothers, and friends expect us to find decent looking, reliable, smart creatures of marriageable age?  Everybody has been ruined by MTV and intoxicants. It’s not like there were course units at university dedicated to equipping us with the skills necessary for hooking tiptop specimens for companionship and baby making.

Because Plan B cares, here’s a guide to catching a spouse from somebody who has no idea what she’s talking about.

First things first, wailing, gnashing teeth and putting up incendiary posts on facebook about your nasty exes isn’t going to help you, friend. All you’ll get is wrinkles on your soul from all the bitterness. Making eyes at your friends’ mates isn’t an option either, because anybody who willfully overturns or wujjas another person’s sepiki of happiness makes a date with disaster in the future. Your step-grandchild will steal your spouse. Your hair will get roasted under the dryer at the saloon. Everything you touch will turn into maggots. Point is, don’t violate other people’s relationships in order to diminish your throbbing need for a mate.

Read and react violently to online articles like that one about intellectual African scum that went viral. Make sure your dramatic reaction is posted on every social network that exists. This will impress somebody and as a reward for all your exclamation marks, you’ll receive a friend/follow request. I know this the only real advice in this article because I’ve heard of twomances and fbromances and googleplusmances.

Look gorgeous and if you’re already doing that and it’s not working, look horrible. You know, reverse psychology.  Shock all the people who count by starting to look so bad that they’ll get concerned and begin texting you to find out if you’re OK. After this stage, it’s up to you to reply with messages that make you seem like the best thing since beans and tomato sauce. Before you know it, you shall be a happily married and pregnant girl/ scared shitless young man accompanying your new wife to antenatal class.

Take your pretty dresses and smart jeans to church, mosques and other such places. Apparently, this kind of place is both the best and worst place to network with intent to marry as the people there are all so damaged from the horrible lives they led before falling at the feet of God that you can’t be sure about their sanity. Plan B has no idea how true this is, but be as careful with them as you are with the heathens.

Or, instead of going to all this trouble, we could just ask our older relatives to arrange the marriages that they’re so enthusiastic about. In fact, all invitation cards to grad parties should have this printed on the envelope: For admission, come with an attractive and responsible person in the age group of the graduand.

The right to expose legs.

It’s really hot as I am writing this. It is as hot as a cocktail of lava, the breath of a hundred firesides and Michael Kiwanuka’s voice. This means that while you’re likely to get several shades darker the moment the sun makes contact with your skin, this heat wave is not entirely un-enjoyable. There’s a fantastic breeze every few minutes, chilled bottled water in every shop and maybe 50 decent swimming pools peppering the city. A good pair of sunglasses isn’t hard to find or hard on the wallet of its finder.

This is preferable to the wet season when half the country is producing so much mucus that appearing in public places is like sticking your face into a bag of death. When it’s rainy, life enhancers like ice cream and beach sand are not as effective in manufacturing joy.

Earlier today as I was walking towards my taxi, bobbing my head to Nneka, feeling young and free, I heard shouting behind me. Turning to look, I found myself the focus of much attention. I panicked. What could be the matter? Was I trailing toilet paper? Was the back of my dress tucked into things it had no business being tucked into? A quick inspection assured me that everything was in order.

Meanwhile, the shouting had not abated. If anything, it had adopted a more disturbing note. On taking one earphone out, this is what I heard, “Words in Luganda. More words in Luganda. Oyambade! Toddangamu! Even more words in Luganda” and even though I couldn’t understand half of the ugliness this dirty man was coughing in my direction, I got a strong impression that he was objecting to the length and cut of my dress.

Msw

The only reasons I didn’t beat him into an unrecognizable pulp, didn’t unleash indignation, disgust and rapid slaps upon him were that I looked too cute for such and I was running late. I replaced my earphone and sashayed away as languorously as the Ntinda dust would allow.

I am, however, still confused. How can an adult bray so hysterically, to the extent of foaming at the mouth in protest of the display of such gorgeous legs on such a hot day? If I were a white tourist (who Ugandan men don’t ever bother for wearing even the shortest clothes, as if their thighs are less thigh-y for being white), I wouldn’t have received flak for wearing my sundress. It also annoys me that he wouldn’t have had the guts to even lift his fat top lip from his shriveled bottom one if I had been walking with a man.

I’m sure that I speak for all Ugandan women when I say that we’ve had it. We’re sick of taking deep breaths and bracing ourselves for assault whenever we see idle men standing in a group or when we’re passing by taxi stages. Whose suppurating orifices did these men drop out of? Their mothers should be found and flogged for neglecting to teach their sons manners. If you notice in a few years that taxi conductors and stage lumpens are getting older, it’s because I’ve branded them with a curse which goes, “May you never develop and may your condition be permanent” as a result of their bad manners.

We are not going to bake in bikoyis to accommodate the ridiculous, irrelevant sensibilities of lumpens and we’re never going accept that popular theory that such unwanted attention is really ‘appreciation’.

Step aside, chocolate. Cuteness is the new solution to everything.

“The only rule is don’t be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.” That’s right. I just quoted Paris Hilton at you. There are times when she makes lots of sense, or maybe it was just that one time. I don’t google her enough to know.

The essentialness of cuteness cannot be stressed enough, mostly if you want things to fall into place for you as smoothly as petals off a rose that is being roughly shaken.

Those S.V peoples can draw, eh?

It’s just as much a weapon as intimidating eyes and strong teeth and a black belt in judo. If your genes haven’t blessed you with features that make people’s eyes drool, don’t despair, for with the right combination of clothing and face paint, you can catch up.

Babies are born looking adorable to counter the violent feelings that they inspire in adults. Cuteness is their only defense against the likelihood of their caretakers karate kicking them as a direct result of their loud, insatiable, dramatic ways.

Some girls have even made it into a life philosophy. For it to work properly though, the girl has to be as cute as a teacup pig, as a bunny in drag, as a five year old in his mother’s shoes.

When she turns up with five annoying girlfriends to further delay the time that you’ll be partaking of her goodies, you pay that bill with a smile in your heart, because she is cute. When she soaks all your white shirts with all your black jeans in her attempt to appear ‘helplessly spoiled’ and ‘naturally unable to do housework’, you forgive her, because with your big shirt hanging over her sweet frame, she’s the cutest thing in the history of ever.

Take Sarah. Sarah went shopping at a boutique in equatorial mall manned by one of the cutest specimens on the globe. Strong shoulders, tiny waist, nice calves, amazing teeth and an endearing tendency to hug her customers more than once one they’re inside her shop.

It was a good shopping trip, with Sarah finding many gorgeous clothes, paying for them and flying back to office on a boda boda. Two hours later, she received a frantic call. “Oh nooo”, the voice on the other end whined. I’ve looked for the money every where. Could you have taken it? It’s not anywhere in my shop.” To which Sarah said, “Um. I have no idea.”

What was to be done? Was this shopper supposed to harden her heart and deafen her ears towards this cute, potentially shady girl? Of course not. Nobody but a total cretin that was brought up in the buttocks of a warthog can be unkind to a cutie. So she said, “Ok. When can I see you to pay you again?” and that was that.

There are theories all over the internet about how cute people are more likeable and how they’re more likely to succeed because everybody wants them to be happy. Well, of course they’re true. Who doesn’t want a cute president?

Even Japanese anime probably wouldn’t have become so popular if the girls in it weren’t svelte, large eyed, watermelon bosomed and tiny voiced.

Alien planets and goldfish brains. Keeping track.

Once upon a time, there lived an ugly little planet.

Not pretty.

Because it was too hideous for any god to consider it as a home for any decent creations, it attached itself to earth when nobody was looking. To keep itself entertained, it would commit small acts of larceny against Earth’s inhabitants. One sock out of a pair, car keys, katorchis and occasionally, cats.

By deploying miniature monkeys, this planet (that we’ll call Bog from this point on) was able to accumulate objects that it knew would be hard for owners to miss, but would make them really frustrated and uncomfortable once they realized that their property had literally disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Because Bog has been pulling this thieving stunt for a very long time, it recently ran out of space. Also, there’s only so much entertainment that socks, keys and earrings can offer anybody, much less Bog, a kleptomaniac planet of fierce ability and infinite evil.

Starting to itch for more power and bigger game, it sent its tiny monkeys on a mission to find a suitable host for possession.

I look cute but I eeeveeeel.

After swinging around for about half a minute, the lazy minions got bored and jumped into the ears of the first person they saw and then secreted a terrible disease into their brain; a disease characterized by forgetfulness and disorientation. That person, Bog’s fateful victim, was and still is Apenyo Mildred.

Whenever I enter a room, sit down and then walk out of said room, I leave something behind. I unintentionally abandon valuable property, the absence of which will fill me with panic, sadness and self-loathing in that order. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’ve entered the room with anything desirable or even detachable. If I didn’t have anything to forget, the world, the very universe would be forced to create one.

I enter a church, I forget my notebook. I enter a hostel room, my hands fly to my ears, remove an ear stud and I leave it behind. I go to my friend’s house, I leave my muffins behind and take her glasses by mistake. I go to a video store and unwittingly make a donation of my music player. I swear, if I leave another beautiful book on the seat of one more boda boda, I’ll have to head butt something young and vulnerable or else risk implosion as a direct result of RAGE.

All this wouldn’t be so intolerable if I wanted to lose peoples’ property in revenge for sins they committed against me or if I actually meant to steal things; but it’s nothing like that. Some people say that objects react to and mirror rifts in relationships. Say Mary and Jane-best friends fall out; the jeans that Jane gave to Mary will get badly ripped in a taxi. The ring that Mary took from Jane will break. Anyway, none of this is applicable in my situation, dear friends. Your property in my possession is not getting lost because I’d like you to get lost. It’s this terrible disease from Bog that is turning my brain into soup.

What can a girl do to heal herself of such a terrible affliction? She can make lists. If I can find the motivation to make a list of everything in my possession before I leave the house and then keep consulting this list every half hour, maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to beat this madness.

Idiot’s guide to surviving post holiday fat(terness).

Two weeks after the holiday season and people are still fat. Two whole weeks and faces haven’t stopped widening, guts haven’t stopped trying to out-expand balloons and entumbwes have gone on getting chunkier and wobblier. This makes me feel:  amusement, disdain, kinship, joy and most of all, surprise that Ugandans, including myself, haven’t grown snouts, spouted tails and thick body hair as a result of all the livestock that we’ve consumed ever since we were set free from employment mbu Christmas break.

Gaining more weight in four weeks than you have ever carried is inconveniencing to say the least. You start to avert your eyes and mutter “poser!” under your breath whenever you see people heading for the stairs instead of hopping into the elevator with you. You begin to be paranoid that your new butt is hogging more space in the lift than is decent and then get defensive about it. “So what if my behind looks like a sofa? ‘twas the season to get fatter!”. You discover a deep hatred of joggers and a new tolerance for the phrase ‘phat and fabulous’ and yet that is a really annoying phrase.

What solutions are there to this new state of things? Not new year resolutions which are a waste of note paper. Skipping will take forever to yield results and you don’t have the motivation to make a gym schedule and stick with it or you wouldn’t be reading idiot’s guides. Whatever shall you do? This is what:

Boil your food: The only drawback here is that boiled food sucks. Your enthusiasm for eating in general can be so diminished by the insipid lumps in front of you that really you’re not eating anymore. You’re lost in a game in which your fork is Godzilla, your plate is his cave and he’s throwing a tantrum in which all his property get’s destroyed. Also, the likelihood of food attacking your face is higher when it’s boiled because it’s not weighed down by grease. If you’ve never felt the caress of lukewarm, watery soup on your cornea, know that it feels really disgusting.

Walk to work. Every time you hail a boda to haul you up the hill to your office, you give your stomach permission to bulge and sag. Unless you’re pregnant and/ or really comfortable with a huge droopy belly, this isn’t cool. So the next time the taxi drops you at your stage, stretch, walk to the kasoli woman, buy your breakfast gonja and walk to work.

Get comfortable. Because the holiday is over and the black hole that is school/work stress is yawning open to receive you, you’re going to return to normal. Your neck will deflate and your fingers will stop resembling sausages. In the meantime, if you have cool friends, have fun. Turn their disastrous figures into laughs to take attention away from your own shapelessness. Say things like: Hey Albo, your butt looks pregnant. Or Shut up, Martha or I’ll pop you. Or Linda, you look like a condom full of odi. Things like that. By bobbing up and down with laughter, you all get some exercise. Also, your remark might convince them to take on sports or green tea or both.