3/18/03
My body isn't what it once was.
That's an understatement.
My body has turned into a huge mass of slow-flowing, angry goo.
That doesn't mean that I've thrown all of my petty vanities out the window. I look in the mirror in the morning and try to find something that pleases me. It's kind of like doing the Word Find on Allie's placemats at Tony Roma's. The problem is the morning body game in the mirror is getting more and more difficult as each day passes.
There was a time when my body was happy. It was lean, well-muscled and agile. It remained in pretty good shape until my early-to-mid twenties when I discovered the joys of beer, butter and not moving so much.
As I write this, my body has reached the zenith of it's degradation. Of course I'm not saying that it can't, and won't, get worse. I'm just saying it's never been worse than it is right now.
My body is tired and listless all the time. It rebels when I exert it even the least little bit. My office is up just four stories and when I take the stairs you'd think I was having an asthma attack right after I'd been told Deb was having triplets. I feel the need to nap every thirty minutes. When Allie and I played horsy a few weeks ago, eight trips on my hands and knees up and down the hallway with a 30 pound weight on my back caused me to get tunnel vision accompanied by a bright light and people waving me toward the light.
As I mentioned it looks bad, too. I don't suffer from man boobs but I have noticed the hint of a conical form whenever my chest points toward the ground and I don't have a shirt on (which, these days, doesn't happen very much). I have a double chin that looks like I'm wearing a fleshy neck brace twenty four hours a day. Then there's my gut. It hangs over my pants and I'm well past the stage where I can hide it by poofing out my shirts a little when I tuck them in. I was working in New Orleans once and a man I didn't know walked up to me and said, "I can tell you're on the level." I asked him how he could tell this. He said, "Because your bubble's in the middle."
Funny guy.
Why am I telling you this? I don't know. Maybe I believe public humiliation will finally be the tool that switches on the lose weight, regain strength and endurance portion of my brain. Regardless, I'm sick of telling myself: "Today's the day I finally get serious. Today I'm going to eat right and exercise. Today I'm going to start running again, lifting again, stretching again, playing again. Today I start melting the goo so I can play the mirror game and win once in awhile, look good for my wife, win some matches, run with my Dad, start a T-shirt collection from a bunch of races, play with my daughter until she begs me to leave her alone so she can get some rest."
Will it happen?
I doubt it. But I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, I'm going to grab a few cookies and a quick nap.