On Saturday, we went down to\u00a0check out a family expo happening at the Orlando Convention center. It turned out to be a\u00a0weird little consumer trade show aimed at central\u00a0Florida families, with\u00a0a wide mix of vendors.<\/p>\n
One of the booths\u00a0was all black, with the words “gladiator camp” scrawled in red across its\u00a0top.<\/p>\n
Figuring it was some sort of exercise after-school program,\u00a0I nudged my oldest son. “You\u00a0should check that out.”<\/p>\n
He glanced at it. “Why?”<\/p>\n
“Don’t you want to be a gladiator?” I asked. The two of us has been trying to trick\u00a0each other into visiting embarrassing booths all morning. “Because you could be a gladiator.”<\/p>\n
He tilted his head at me, then shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”<\/p>\n
The people inside the booth were incredibly fit. As we approached, a guy with arms roughly as\u00a0thick as my legs stepped out to greet us.<\/p>\n
I bumped shoulders with my son. “It’s all you.”<\/p>\n
“No,” the guy said, looking at me. “This isn’t for kids.”<\/p>\n
My son’s eyebrows shot up. He crossed his arms and took a step back.<\/p>\n
“It’s. . \u00a0. huh?” I said.<\/p>\n
“Don’t you want to be a gladiator?” my son asked.<\/p>\n
“I, uh. . .”<\/p>\n
The guy stepped closer,\u00a0explaining that it was personal one-on-one strength training in a group setting so that the group could support each other in their physical challenges.<\/p>\n
Behind him, my son gave a little wave and sauntered away\u00a0to join his mom and brother. I’m not sure, but I think he was whistling.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0salesman\u00a0glanced at my arms ever so briefly,\u00a0then added “it’s for all levels of fitness.”<\/p>\n
Sheesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I suppose I earned this one… But that hasn’t stopped me from planning my revenge. Enjoy! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6DpYi-whoops","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}