I was a broken man. My shins were splinted. My feet were blistered. I was pacing around the living room at 11:30 PM like a caged tiger, just trying to close my rings.
Meanwhile, my wife was sitting on the sofa, eating a bowl of ice cream, looking fresh as a daisy.
“How are you doing that?” I wheezed. “I’ve been on my feet all day. You’re an accountant!”
She shrugged, spooning vanilla bean into her mouth. “I just have a very efficient stride, honey. Maybe you need to work on your form.”
My wife and I were in a “steps competition” to see who could get the most in a week.
It had started as a fun way to get in shape. It had turned into a blood feud. And I was losing. Badly.
She was crushing me, logging 20,000 steps a while working a desk job.
The math didn’t make sense. Unless she was doing lunges to the printer or running laps in the conference room, there was no way she was hitting those numbers. I suspected foul play. I suspected she was shaking her wrist while typing.
Then, fate intervened. I woke up on Wednesday with a fever and a sore throat.
I stayed home sick one day and found out her secret.
I was lying on the couch, drifting in and out of a nap, when I heard the back door open. I groggily lifted my head. I saw my wife step out onto the patio. She looked around, checking the perimeter like a spy exchanging secrets.
She called our dog, Barnaby—a hyperactive Border Collie with the energy of a nuclear power plant.
She didn’t put a leash on him. She knelt down and unclasped something from her wrist.
She was attaching her FitBit to the dog’s collar.
My jaw dropped. I watched in horror as she picked up the Chuckit! launcher.
She was playing fetch in the backyard for an hour.
Every time Barnaby sprinted across the lawn to retrieve the ball, my wife was racking up hundreds of steps while sipping her morning coffee. She wasn’t an athlete; she was a fraud. I had been sweating and suffering to compete against a creature that was literally bred to run sheep across the Scottish Highlands.
I lay back down, defeated but enlightened. I didn’t confront her. Instead, when she came back inside, flushed with “exertion,” I simply told her I was conceding the match. After all, I can’t compete with a four-legged Olympian, but I can be the one who tells her that the “steps winner” is now responsible for mowing the lawn.
