Pudgy Me 4: That Damn Gym

That damn gym.   Gulag 17 more like it.  My wife, Karen, and I joined this facility about four or five years ago, knowing it wasn’t as much a “typical gym” as a health and fitness center for people who are old, obese, recovering from heart attacks and major surgery, and, of course, most importantly, have been wheeled-in with all of the above.  

For sure, it has all the accoutrements of an actual gym, treadmills and stairmasters and all sorts other aerobic equipment, isometric weight machines, spin bikes, free weights, a hard wood aerobics floor, a padded floor for badminton or basketball, and an indoor track.  A swimming pool for laps and aerobic classes and a hot tub, along with nice-sized men and women’s locker rooms equipped with saunas and showers, gives the facility everything one would need to workout and then some.  However, in addition, there are plenty of oxygen tanks and blood pressure monitors on little dollies for the enfeebled and push bikes for the infirmed and plenty of young staff members and interns running around checking blood pressure and heart rates.  It’s like one of those gyms where if someone falls, you don’t know if they will ever get up.  Like you chalk down another one on the instep of your old sneakers and hope the next one isn’t you.  

Essentially, Karen and I fit the profile of the participants (and patients) to a “t”.  In all probably, of all the people to whom the Health and Fitness Center was appealing in their advertisements and brochures, other than those close-to-death clients dumped near their door by the local hospitals, we were it; when we joined we were already older-than-sin and bulbously-obese too -- not “extremely-obese” as the term implies, but well on our way to a level of dire consequences that no one wants to reach, meaning significantly past the line of demarcation within the nationally-recognized Body Mass Index which separates the “overweight” from the “obese.”  We were so much so that the BMI didn’t even come up in our entry conversations on our goals with the staff physical therapists.  

Though we hadn’t had our prerequisite heart attacks to attain full-blown status at the Center, I figured, it was only a matter of time before we too achieved that honor due to us.  Being connected to the Center, I guess, was our way of getting ahead in the game.  In truth, unfortunately, it gave us the extra excuse back home to eat yummy, high-carbohydrate, fat-filled dinners and sweet, sugary snacks with plenty of crunchy chocolate morsels before bedtime.  Our strategy, I guess, articulating it now, in looking back, was to agree with each other that we would atone for our transgressions by going to the gym the next day (or, maybe, the day after) following such guilty gluttony.  At least, that was the plan, even if we were poor, shameful sinners in the actual execution!  

Of course, one doesn’t join a center like this out of the blue.  Our story goes back a few years earlier if I recall....

Six years earlier, as a matter of fact, now that I think about it, on a Saturday afternoon in the beginning of summer.  Karen saw an advertisement in the local paper for a large research study starting up at the Health and Fitness Center.  The advertisement indicated that the study focused on exercise and was looking for middle-aged men to be test subjects.  Of course, in a moment of inspiration (she said she was looking out the window and seeing me struggle to mow the lawn), Karen signed me up.   

Turns out, the study was seeking to determine if a minimal amount of exercise could lower blood pressure and cholesterol readings in men who were essentially slugs.  Karen didn’t have a clue as to my health (and nor did I actually, as I hadn’t been to a doctor in years), but she knew I was carrying enough weight to look like a turtle and when it came to a minimum amount exercise, we both agreed, I was an absolute professional.  That summer afternoon, in fact, while Karen was reading the paper and I reluctantly was mowing our postage-stamp of a lawn (finally), I felt I had gotten more than my share of exercise and was planning to spend the rest of the afternoon recovering from the exertion asleep on the couch.  

When Karen informed me of how she had saved my life (while I was slaving outside), I thought the whole thing ridiculous.  But, after my usual, pre-requisite period of complaining, I agreed to go, if only to see what the doctors had to say about my health and, in fact, prove to Karen, once and for all, that I was in good shape.  (Damn that woman’s constant nagging about my health!)  Though literally it had been fifteen to twenty years since I had seen a doctor, I knew I still “had it” from, hey, way back, back, back in my running days.  

Karen said, as if to emphasize she had done a good thing:  “Besides, you old kook, it says here that if you qualify, they’ll pay you $200.”  

Oh my god!  It was like the perfect part-time job.  “They will pay me to exercise?  Jeez, dear, maybe I should start wolfing down ice cream bars now!’
 
Turns out I had nothing to worry about.  My participation in the “Man Study” began shortly after that initial screening.  Indeed, I made the cut due to a sufficiently high LDL cholesterol level, whatever that means.  In truth, I didn’t have a clue.  I certainly didn’t know bad cholesterol was hanging out in my system, but, I was told, this LDL-stuff, somehow, had climbed into my bloodstream and was lurking around, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer in the alleys, hallways, and men’s bathrooms near my heart.  The doctors said my LDL cholesterol level was bad enough to qualify me for the study, but not so bad that they were desperate to dump a prescription of this or that down my throat, or forget the drugs altogether and call in an undertaker instead, or, worse, bring in my wife.  So, I agreed to participate, mystified by the whole thing  - afterall, I was in the prime of health -- what? wasn’t it just a decade or two ago?  How fast things change!

‘Maybe this will not be so bad,’ I decided.  (‘... and, hey, when do I get my first paycheck?’)  This study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was to last one year.  We were told it would begin simply enough by requiring us to run through a series of tests.  Subsequently, we would take four months off during which time we were to do nothing but what we do normally (‘Hey, I can do that!’), then, we would be given the same tests over again.
 
The physical phase of the study would begin with eight months of exercise at the Health and Fitness Center.  Specifically, I was to workout four times a week for forty minutes a day under the daily supervision of a team of therapists.  (‘Jeez, isn’t that getting a little personal?’)  Finally, two sets of tests would be conducted at the end of the study -- the first being after the exercise period and the second following two weeks of inactivity (‘Hey, I can do that too!’).  In addition to the money, I would receive four  months of membership to the Center.  (‘Oh sure, like I’m going to keep exercising without getting paid.  Right!’)

‘Okay, so what’s the catch?  This all seems easy enough.’  In fact, in discussions with the doctors, I learned, it was even easier -- they didn’t care what time of day I went to the gym or what days I chose in any given week, as long as I checked in with the therapists, did the exercise, wore a heart monitor across my chest, and wrote down in their stupid logbook some simple data that even a blind idiot speaking Chinese could manage.  They didn’t care what I ate or when I ate it or even if I lost a single pound in the course of the year.  

‘We are not a diet study,’ they said.  

‘Oh, okay.  That’s really good to know.  Do you give out Doritos?’

This was an incredible study, for sure!

The random cluster of guinea pigs to which I was assigned, focused on a high-level of aerobic exercise, which sounds worse than it was.  It meant, essentially, I was asked to walk briskly on a treadmill four times a week.  Once a week they would take my monitor and download the data.  My task was to keep my heart-rate elevated at the prescribed (and easily attainable) level.  Nothing more. Nothing less.  

‘Jeez, this is easier than mowing my lawn. What gives?’  

Turns out, it was the tests.  Signing the five-page contract meant agreeing to the tests...

‘Hey, who thought up this stuff?’ I wondered, when I heard what they wanted to do,  ‘and who at the National Institutes of Health thought it made sense?’

‘Jeez, doctors!  Only in America!’

Believe me, from what I could tell, not one test had anything to do with bad cholesterol or high blood pressure.  It was almost like the guys-in-charge said, ‘What the hell, if we are going to ask NIH to fund our study, let’s test everything we can think of to make it look legitimate.’   

First of all, I had to agree to a stress test which required that I walk, then run, on a treadmill as it continually increased in speed until I was physically unable to continue.  In this test, though, in order to be sure it fit the weirdness criteria required by the study, I had to have all sorts of live wires strapped to my chest, my nose pinched off, and a large oxygen tube taped to my mouth so the doctors could analyze the air I was breathing.  (‘Damn, why didn’t he brush his teeth?’)  

A second test required that I lie on a recliner for forty minutes with my head and neck enclosed in large, sealed, plastic bag (and air tube) analyzing my breathing at rest.  This put me to sleep, of course, though it is hard to get comfortable with a broiler bag over your head.  

At the local hospital  I was required to have a CT scan, which was like lying on a gurney while a huge piece of equipment took one continuous picture of me starting at my toes and working up to my neck.  I checked to see if my hairs were burned off or my testicles were glowing red, but all seemed fine.  I couldn't help but wonder if they sold the picture for pornographic purposes.  

At the local college sport complex I had to perform a knee-bend/leg-lift with weights for three minutes.  Weird.  Not sure what the leg-lift was all about, but it was cool that the athletes in the room came over, like I was one of them, and asked what type of ball I played.  When I mumbled I tossed a wiffle ball to my little nephew at a family outing a few years back, they all walked away...  

One of the weirder tests required that I climb into a ‘bod pod’ wearing tight, little, spandex shorts and a spandex skull cap, so, I was told, the doctors could determine my fat content.  The ‘bod pod’ was like a plastic egg with a window, like a little space capsule, and I thought, maybe, perhaps, all the tests I had performed until then had been a charade, like my wife and doctors had gotten together to launch me unsuspectingly into the future.  (“Let somebody else deal with him!’)  Or worse, without my realizing it, they all agreed it was time I climb into their experimental human microwave oven and with a turn of the dial -- splat, my fat corpuscles would be everywhere.  

Ah yes, back at the Center, I had to agree to allow the doctors to take about fifty vials of my blood, ending with a special surgical treatment on two occasions where a doctor snipped a ‘pea’ worth of muscle tissue from my leg.  (‘Ouch, hey, put that back!’)         

On top of it all, in terms of total weirdness, I never did find out if all of this effort, this year of devotion to the study -- the tests, the hanging out on my couch, the endless visits to the Center, the months of walking to nowhere on the treadmill -- if any of it lowered my cholesterol one bit.  

When I asked about it after the study, the doctors laughed, like it was a joke on me, and said they had no idea.  I was simply one number in a large, hundreds-of-participants’ study.  

‘Hey, read our scientific paper when it comes out in the New England Journal of Medicine,’ they said as I got up to leave.  

‘Great,’ I said.  ‘I’ll wait for the movie.’  

‘Look,’ they said, ‘If our theory is correct, you will have, at least, marginally lowered your cholesterol, and that has to be good.’  

‘Is this what you’ve told all the other guinea pigs?’ I mumbled to myself, incredulously as I left the room and the doctors behind.  

‘Oh, no.  No,’ I imagined them saying, ‘They all died.  You’re our only survivor!  You must know -- out of all of our patients, you are, in fact, the Chosen One!’  

Of course, I would be knocked speechless by this news!  ‘Wait a minute, let me get my wife.  She needs to hear this!’

‘You are the One,’ I could hear them repeating, ‘In analyzing your four gallons of blood, you are the one amongst us to have a special humanoid factor in your veins that will allow you to be for many of us the world’s first, great, super hero.’

‘I knew it!’ I would be thinking.  ‘All my life, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!’

‘Unfortunately,’ I could hear the doctors caution.  ‘For a few of us -- say, your wife, your boss -- you know, your family and friends -- you must remain a schmuck.  Do you understand?  Can you handle this?’  

‘Yes, for the good of the country, I will remain a schmuck.  Trust me!’

So I did the crime, got the time, received a nominal paycheck, and was awarded with a four-month “free-bee” membership at the Center.  Of course, Karen joined the gym to take advantage of my temporary membership and my new-found commitment to physical excellence, which she loved. (Hey, stud!)  Only, unfortunately, my dedication, like all of my efforts in life, lasted only a month or two, and, in fact, waned to nothing by Christmas of that year.  

Overall, I had lost 26 pounds in the course of the study, but with it over and no new study to keep me enthused, no therapists to keep me honest, and no regular pattern of exercise, my excess weight, waiting at home (‘Hey, where have you been?’), came right back.  In fact, in the next three years that followed I zoomed right past my previous high (what I weighed at the time of the study) and rocketed to the all-time level I was two years ago, that fateful summer my daughter returned from college.  All the while, we belonged to the Health and Fitness Center -- that gulag, that shining city on the hill for the old, the obese, and the infirmed, and, yes, that fabulous facility full of trained therapists who watched me work out like a dog but couldn’t tell me if it did a damn thing for my cholesterol.

Clearly, Super Pudge Man was having issues.

****    

Pudgy Me 3: My Butt is Killing Me

My butt is killing me.  I am sitting on a soft, throw pillow on my favorite easy chair, and, nevertheless, my butt is the primary source of my pain, a throbbing thump pulsating up and down my backside no matter how I angle my body.  This is not good, believe me, and this is not supposed to happen when I’m on my favorite, overstuffed chair -- what the hell is going on!  

-- Wait, give me a second...
 
...Ah, thank goodness for ibuprofen; the last round is wearing off... too soon, too soon… 
 
My daughter, Helen, had her wisdom teeth pulled over the holidays. This fact, made in passing, has nothing to do with my badly-abused butt, but now, because of the pain in my posterior, I am contemplating slugging down her remaining oxycodone.  The two tablets of ibuprofen I took a few minutes ago better kick in soon or it’s on to the heavier stuff.   

-- But, what if the oxycodone numbs my mouth rather than the 'offending-object-of-my-attention'?  I would hate to have my lips numb and my tongue lolling around, banging against my chin, while at the same time my butt is shooting electrical sparks up and down my back and side-to-side from cheek-to-cheek.  “Can you tell me what’s wrong, son?” my old doctor would ask.  

“Loooolll....”    
 
Listen, I’m not seeking sympathy, believe me, and this pain in my backside is not nearly the level of craziness requiring an ambulance crew running in to wheel me out in my easy chair, or, for that matter, undergoing major, extractive surgery with a team of surgeons removing my gluteus maximus, say, for a smaller (hopefully) and less painful gluteus maximus from a warm (I feel no pain) cadaver.  No, my throbbing arse, I'm afraid, is purely the result of a running-thing, and this thing is killing me as surely as my wife's arsenic snuck into my breakfast every morning.
 
Several months ago I decided to attempt a half-marathon... or so I said.  Sometimes when I’m out on the road training, I think, I am not running at all, but emptying whatever fumes I have left in my old, rusted tank-of-a-chest.  It’s like I’m composed of crumbling clay -- if I glance back behind me, I will spot bits and pieces of me, like large clumps of dried mud, cluttered along my route.  If I ran any slower, drivers passing by would think I am a living statue, a poorly-designed monument to weary, old men who get crazy notions of lost youth lodged in their heads.  If I was on a theatrical stage, people would think I am a pantomime playing out the physical characteristics of a dubious long-distance runner, moving deliberately in the slow motion of exaggerated drudgery while remaining depressingly, forever, in one place.  (Okay, got it, enough with the alliterations!)

Needless-to-say, this is not good.  Not when the race I signed up for (and paid way too much money to participate in) has a fifteen-hour time-limit...     

-- ‘Wait a minute!’ you are saying probably.  ‘What’s going on here?  Have I missed something?  Where’s our buddy, 'Pudgy Me'?  When did 'The Pudge-Man' start running and... and, when are you going to tell us how you lost all that weight?’   

To be honest, I never set out to lose any weight.  Then, again, once you learn more about the kind of guy I am, you will discover I never set out to do anything.  

I was on my easy chair -- yes, the very same, overstuffed, easy chair in which I now am suffering in agony.  About two-or-so years ago I went out and purchased my chair at a second-hand store (much to my wife’s dismay), jammed it on its side into the back of my old jeep, and drove home, carrying it into the house by myself, grunting and groaning every inch of the way, precisely so I could sit on it with my blossoming posterior, precisely so I could watch the channels on tv I wanted to watch, and, most importantly, precisely so I could sleep in peace.

Until then, if I was on the couch in the other room, and I fell asleep while watching the evening news, say, my wife would lean over and poke me hard in the side, admonishing me, “Hey, wake up, you old kook, you’re missing the news!”  Her finger knew every time exactly where to find my diaphragm!  

-- ‘Ugh!  I can’t breathe!  What’s going on?  Where am I?  Have the British landed?’

Almost immediately upon bringing my chair into the house, it became a marriage savior and, ultimately, kept you-know-who from being strapped down onto another chair.  My chair had the one essential feature necessary to become a beloved member of my house -- a foot rest!  Pull back the bar by the side of the chair and an-ever-so-cool footpad plops up with a soft thump to nestle under my woefully- inadequate, well-worn, run-damaged feet.  It’s heaven, I swear!  I can be asleep in seconds, and, just as significantly, I’m not gasping for breath minutes later for missing, of all things, the evening news!  Since I bought my chair and brought it into my life, we have become true-blue, bosom buddies.  

My dastardly daughter -- what a pain she can be -- pulled me up and out of my restful roost.  

Nearly two years ago in June, Helen came home from college to work for the summer.  The job she found required that she sit at a computer all day and enter data.  It wasn’t long before this exercise-in-adulthood started driving her crazy.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but my fate was sealed when I signed her up at our gym so she could work-out after work.  If truth be told, we never should have mentioned our gym to her!  In fact, actually joining that damn gym, to begin with, was a stupid idea; I don’t think my wife, Karen, and I ever went enough to get our money’s worth.  However, the facility was nearby and exercise was one of those things we did when Karen decided we simply needed to do something, once and for all, about our weight.  She would get all antsy and, soon enough, we both would suffer.  After a couple of visits -- me walking along on a ridiculous treadmill that, it turned out, went nowhere (!) and Karen struggling on an elliptical thing-a-ma-jig -- our enthusiasm would wane, and we would return to the endless nights of tv news and the too-close-for-comfort embrace of our confining couch.  

‘Sputtering’ I guess, is how you would describe it.  We were sputtering along, fat as whales -- and me, now that I could hear my new easy chair welcoming me the moment I entered the house (‘Hey, big fella!  You’re home!’), I was in complete denial.  I truly felt I had solved my one-and-only immediate problem: gaining separation from my wife and her diabolical finger.  I put a stool next to my new chair, plopped a beer on top it, grabbed the tv gun, and was good to go!  Asleep in seconds!  Had I gone to the doctor, say, for a physical, I am sure, I would have discovered I was experiencing all the health issues that come with age -- obesity, diabetes, increased blood pressure, high cholesterol levels -- you know, the things we expect to experience as we get older and, if truth be told, are oh-so boring.  

I guess, I never really thought about the implications, or, rather, in this age of media overkill, I guess, I was sleeping when these particular health segments came on the news.  Of course, none of our friends bothered to mention our burgeoning weight, and, to be honest, Karen and I simply didn’t talk to each other about our deteriorating health.  I suppose, looking back, I was heading for a heart attack, stroke, or some strange, debilitating disease as a result of my unwholesome weight.  But, so what.  Wasn’t this the badge of honor for being nearly sixty, middle class, and experiencing all the joys life has to offer?   

My duplicitous daughter -- she can be so irritating -- told me I was screwed up.

“It’s a good thing I came home, Dad.  You’re so screwed up.”

That’s what she said, or something like that.  She had taken a zumba class at our gym and a class in circuit training and wanted to know why I wouldn’t join her for a “step” class that very same night.  She said her mom -- my wife -- had agreed to go, but I was the obstacle keeping it from being a truly family thing!

-- Listen, I was totally relaxed in my easy chair, my foot rest was fully engaged, and the news was about to come on in an hour so -- so why would I, then, break away to participate with them in a “soft” female, exercise-thing -- everything was aligned so nicely!  I mean, even if it was mid-June, wasn’t it still cold outside, and, if not, too hot?  And, okay, I’m going to say it -- I never saw highlights of ‘step’ on Sports Center, or even, on the questionable sports shows, like the ones featuring high school cheerleading competitions at Disney World-- so, wasn’t this a direct challenge to my manhood?

“Dad, you can be so irritating!  You talk to him, mom!” Helen moaned in frustration, running upstairs to get ready for the class.

--’Uh-oh!'  Here comes the big gun in the form of Little-Miss-Antsy-Me...

“Wake up, you old fool!” Antsy-Me says, pointing her deadly finger at me.  “This is the one thing you can do for your daughter.  She’s only around for the summer, she goes out at night, and you don’t see her in the course of your day.  Why wouldn’t you want to do this with her?”  

-- Ugh.  Karen -- now she’s a piece of work -- obviously she isn’t in touch with her inner fat cells.                

-- Well... well... well, jeez, in that light... jeez...  

“Okay,” I say in the most reluctant voice I can muster.  It is obvious my demeanor isn’t much better (just in case Karen hasn’t caught the reflection I am aiming for in my voice) -- and ‘enthusiastic’ is not the word I would use to describe it.  I get off my chair grudgingly (‘No, no, no!’ my comfort buddy says) and go upstairs to put on a ratty, old t-shirt and a pair of too-tight exercise shorts that fit just fine ten years ago. (‘What are you doing?’ my buddy calls out from afar, ‘What about the news?’).  

-- ‘Goodbye good friend!’ I say sadly, as I walk by the room where my chair is a major monument to my sedentary-but-serene life.  ‘May our paths cross again!’  With a huge sigh, I get into the car with Karen and Helen to go to the gym.  ‘Weren’t we just at the gym several months ago? --’  

“-- And what, what is the female, pseudo-exercise thing we’re doing tonight?” I ask hunched over in the back seat, staring out the window like I’m shackled and on the way to prison for the rest of my life, or, worse yet, hoodwinked into shopping with Karen at the mall...

“Step class,” my daughter answers cheerfully, driving the car, avoiding my obvious challenge to start an argument.  

-- ‘Hmmmm... What the hell is ‘step?’ I ask myself, as I watch trees falling, twisters destroying brick building, cars on fire, dogs on leashes biting their masters, red lights bursting into flames, streets crumbling into churned-up-chunks of asphalt, jets falling from the sky, smoke billowing out everywhere around me...  ‘What the hell is ‘step,’ anyway?’  

“Welcome!” say a bunch of old and obese women when we walk into the gym.  

-- Rather, “A Man!” -- I translate when I see I am the only male in the class.  

I am standing on the edge of a wooden floor in the middle of our gym, and I know I am about to be eaten alive by these ravenous women clustered around us in all shapes and sizes.  Some commonalities between them I can see fairly quickly:  none are small and petite, most have huge breasts that have swelled to gigantic proportions with age, and, for that matter, not one is younger than forty.  In fact, I bet, the average age is closer to 70 -- maybe even 100, given several of them.  Geez, because of my pain-in-the-butt daughter, here I am with a bunch of old geezer-wannabees dressed in all manner of clothing -- from full-length pants and blouses to athletic shorts and t-shirts, from black to colorful to abrasive.  They look exactly like Easter eggs.        

The instructor is on a small platform at the front of the class; she is putting on a microphone headset and adjusting her taped music, amplified through the console behind her.  She is wearing tight leggings, bright, colorful sneakers, and two shirts -- a tight, sports undershirt with a loose, sleeveless, t-shirt over it.  Her long, brown hair is tied back.  She is thin and muscular and appears to be no older than my daughter.  Suddenly, I see this for what it is -- a twenty-something being paid to beat up a bunch of old people.  I get it...  

“Welcome to Step!” she says to the group.  “I see we have some new people tonight.” (Who us?  We’ve been members for years!)  “Welcome to Step Challenge,” she says directly to us.  “We’ll begin in just a few minutes.” (I look at Karen and roll my eyes -- 'If we’re in a class where it’s a challenge to step, then we’ve got problems...')

I figure, about twenty women are standing behind low, black, rubberized platforms, and Helen says we will need ones too as this is what we will do for over-an-hour:  we step on and off of these platforms to thumping dance music and the instructor calling out moves.  Well, okay, I have rhythm, or at least I did until I lost it a decade or so back when I tried to do the foxtrot with my daughter at the local Indian Princesses’ Father Daughter Dance (another disaster Antsy-Me got me into!), and I know I can lift my feet (on occasion) rather than shuffle all the time, so this seems easy enough, even if it is for sixty minutes.  

Hey, I have to say, back in junior high school our gym teachers got together and had us square-dancing with the girls.  That was pure torture.  How hard can this be?  

Soon Karen, Helen, and I are standing behind our own platforms, and, when I look down the row, we look like a three “newbies” weirdos, antsy, and oh-so nervous.  Though, that said, it dawns on me, my wife, the traitor, is fitting right in and already engaged in conversations with other women in the class.  Suddenly the logic for my being there becomes clear.  ‘Yes, I’ll do this strange, awful thing for Karen because Karen needs to lose weight, and I need to be more supportive of my wife.  Then, afterward, I will do something manly for myself...  like eat a hotdog.’    

Several women in front of me, who look like they have ‘step’ on the brain, turn to say hi and offer their advice, “Don’t worry about keeping up.  Just keep moving!” they each say.  And I wonder, ‘What the hell they’re talking about?  Maybe I should practice a few times--’

-- ‘Ack!’ my platform says when I step on it for the first time.  ‘You’re fat!’    

‘Oh, shut up.’ I respond.  ‘You stupid piece of equipment.  What do you know about it, anyway.’  

‘Help me, help me!’ it squeaks, again, when I step on it a second time.  ‘A fat man is squashing me to pieces!’  

Oh my god, my luck, of all the platforms, I pick the whiny one.  This is going to be a long night, I decide, thinking, maybe I should drop a barbell on it, so it knows the true meaning of pain.  

“Let’s begin.” says the instructor, before I can follow through with my idea.  “Everyone, Right Basic.” And we start stepping onto the platforms in rhythm with our feet, though, as it turns out, I can’t remember my right from my left.  I must have been home sick that day back in junior high.  I decide, maybe it’s better just to pretend I know what I’m doing and keep moving!      

‘Ouch, ouch!  You’re hurting me.’ squeals my platform.  ‘Oh why, oh why!  Why did I get the fat man who can barely lift his feet!’  

I look around to see if anyone else is noticing how much racket my platform is making, but the instructor is the only one to say, “Lightly now, everyone.”  (- Meaning me!)  “Don’t stomp. This is not a stomp and drag class!”  (Oh, jeez!)     

Soon everyone in the class is swirling around in rhythm to the music, on and off the step in every manner of movement and direction, following the instructor’s lead -- everyone in syncopation -- that is, except me.  (Who taught women to do this?)  Even Karen has it figured out.  However, I alone, am struggling with this stupid on-off ‘step’ thing.  I seem to be on a ten-second tape-delay, trying to execute as quickly as I can what the instructor is telling us, while, at the same time, she is two steps ahead.  Quickly, I am out-of-sorts, my brain can’t process her words fast enough, my platform absolutely hates me, and now I’m sweating like a pig.  

During a brief break for the desperate, I find myself looking over longingly at all the treadmills side-by-side, along the gym, remembering fondly all of my past, wonderful, walks-to-nowhere.  

-- ‘Hey you!’ I suddenly hear one of the treadmills calling over. ‘Don’t you be looking over here!’

-- ‘That’s right, girl!’ I hear another joining in. ‘You stay right where you are, fat man, until you lose some weight.  We’re tired of your tired ass tromping on us!’  

-- Oh jeez, not you too!  What’s up with this gym?

“Okay, everyone,” says the instructor, “Round Two!  Let’s get started.”  

“Dad, wasn’t that great!” Helen exclaims, as we get ready to go home after class.  

“Horrible” I reply into my towel, wiping sweat from my face.  “Horrible is a much better word.”

“Don’t worry, Sweetheart,” Karen says, all-so-superior-like, I can hear it in her voice.  “You’ll get better.”  She and Helen start laughing, like they just shared an inside joke.  

“Ha, ha!”  I say back at them, knowing it’s over.  I have survived the dance of the Easter eggs and successfully completed my duty as both father and husband...  

But, then, the bottom falls out of my well-orchestrated, pastoral life... Helen adds --

“-- We’ll have fun all summer -- there’s a different class every night.”

“What?”  

My victory dog with thick ketchup, diced onions, and piled-high chili, my lovely, overstuffed chair that I carried into the house by myself, my fabulous footpad that pops up so dutifully almost before I even pull the lever, my eagle’s nest at the highest point of the highest mountain back home, suddenly, completely, totally slide away from my grasp, slowly, irrevocably, disappearing into the deepest, darkest, recesses of inner space...

‘Noooooo...’

****

Pudgy Me 2: My Bathroom Scale

Why is it always such a struggle?  I am sitting in the early morning light drinking coffee and wondering why I am fighting with my body, once again.  Every morning I weigh myself before I come downstairs.  Often it is an eye-opening moment - a true wake-up call if you will.  Like standing before the authorities and getting your sentence handed down to you based on what you’ve done the day before.  Gambling on how bad that sentence will be is what I have been doing lately.  My bathroom scale, in reality, is a simple slot machine offering much reward on rare occasions but, all too frequently, out to destroy my hopes with just a metallic clunk and not one plaintive beep of apology.
 
I sleep in light night clothes and can quickly take off my shorts and t-shirt before stepping nude onto my draconian scale.  Lately, I noticed I have been feeling my stomach first, looking at it in the mirror to quickly assess how “pudgy” it appears that day, and, in knowing what I know of my eating history over the previous twenty-four hours and my calorie-burning activities (and, all too often, lack thereof) from the day before, I find I am forced to estimate in a discourse with the scale the impact of my sins before actually climbing onto the guillotine stand and letting the blade drop.
 
I want a new scale, one in which I can tweak it to make adjustments.  I should be able to press a lever, for instance, with my toe and have it re-calibrate its settings to fit my needs that morning.  Do I want the “cold hard truth” every time?  No, I think not.  My scale should give me the degree of truth I prefer on any given morning -- why can’t I press “little white lie” or “complete fiction” now and then and have my results adjusted accordingly?  For example, “Feel good about yourself” should be an option that is available everyday on every scale in America, especially for those difficult days when you really need a comforting feeling to get started.  Certainly, it would be better than the “you just fucked up, you asshole” setting -- which, as luck would have it, is the calibration to which my scale has been set.
   
Hmmm.... now I’m thinking I should check the bottom of my scale and see if there is something I can adjust to take a pound or two away -- just for “special occasions,” mind you.  


Which reminds me of the “special occasion” of going to my doctor’s office for a physical earlier this month.  A special occasion, indeed; it had been three years since my last visit.  I literally used “the special occasion” switch on my scale mentally and was feeling good about myself and my current weight, whether real or imagined, when I walked into my doctor’s office.


Now, I have to tell you, I chose my doctor a number of years back simply because she listed herself as specializing in sports medicine on her paragraph-long bio within a list of doctors approved by my medical insurance plan, and, though the very thought of “sports” now calls forth comforting images of my television set, I actually believed for a brief period in my life that I was in a “sportsmanlike” state of being.  A doctor who could handle my aches and pains as well as the after-effects of my brief but vigorous “sporting” life would be a wise choice when there was no other discernable reason for choosing among the practitioners listed.   


This “sports medicine” decision I embraced with my new doctor was not based on any high school athletic performance (god forbid) or from kicking into gear in college, say, as a result of the guys in my house playing flag football as a team (stoned to the max) in intramural competition, or even afterward, in my twenties, when my years, looking back, were a confusing blur of bad jobs, horrible apartments, and, oh yeah, graduate school.  No, it was in my thirties, after I had eaten my way to a Masters degree and a decent job, when my wife thought she was married to a late blooming, monster child and wanted signed assurances I wouldn’t squash her in bed, it was then that I consciously determined to lose some of the “joyous life” I had accumulated and still held dear (to my waist and soul) from all those years.  


So, in my thirties I started “running” in a local neighborhood park next to our apartment back when we lived in DC and, somehow, over time, managed to leave a small gift of my girth there as well as later in New York and finally here in North Carolina.  Like sweaty scraps of wispy white trash, my caloric-contributions were dropped everywhere I could manage during that period.  Later, still in my thirties, I realized I was running just as much to keep the lost weight from finding me, like scattered fillings to a magnet, as to experience a body and lifestyle I never knew.  


I remember hanging out at 5k and 10K races with the local “in-shape ones,” with the athletes who were just like me except that, unlike me, they made the “right” decisions throughout their lives, resulting in their being fit and in shape and having the ability to wear skin-tight, running clothes that showed off their muscular midriffs and tiny butts.  The new me appeared to fit right in -- that is, as long as you didn’t look under my shirt at my pudginess and as long as no one asked me any questions about my authenticity, my history of athletic prowess, or my worthiness to stand next to them in their Asics gel-max running shoes, or rub against them in their Nike stay-dry tops and bottoms, or, even, smell their talcum powdered air.    


Before the big races, I would walk along the edge of thousands of runners, heading to the back of the field, trying to decide with what group I should stand.  Rather than clustered with runners who ran at, say, a seven-minute pace, or a nine-minute pace, or whatever pace was being touted on various shiny placards (what the hell is “pace” anyway?), I would search for that special cluster of people like me, the group that naturally gravitated to the peeling sign for “former fat people” who, it implied by default, would be discovered for who they were shortly after the race began.  When other clusters were given power bars and sport drinks, ours was given bagged lunches and sweet tea.  We were the ones caught haggling over our sandwiches and exchanging our apples for Doritos not realizing the gun gone off and the race had begun.  We were the ones who arrived at water stops long after the road had been swept clean of discarded cups and most of the volunteers had gone home for dinner.                     


On one occasion, I decided to start a race at the very front of the runners.  I got on the front line under the sign for elite runners and no one stopped me.  Some officials looked confused at me and then at the sign to see if it said anything about former fat people, but no one took my arm and pulled me aside and, most importantly, none of the runners grabbed my shorts and yanked them down to my socks.  I guess I was accepted and finally could relax.  I was standing there looking at everyone and how anorexic they appeared when suddenly the gun went off.  Wow!  Normally I would have had a few minutes to retie my shoes, adjust my shorts, smooth my shirt over my belly, but not here.  Did you know, they expect you to run when the gun goes off?  Hey, wait a minute, does anyone want my apple?  


I think they must have thought I was a street vendor caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Quickly runners were stumbling around me, pushing me to the side, crushing my tuna sandwich.  I decided, in turn, I better run on the sidewalk to avoid the river of humanity trying to get around me.  If it wasn’t for my runner’s bid, saying I wa a runner, I would have fit right in with the cheering crowd.  Several emergency medical assistants caught up with me shortly thereafter and asked if my foot hurt, if I was experiencing a heart attack, or if I was suffering delusions, but I put on a brave face and brushed them all aside.  This was my race and I was in it for nothing but the glory.


Interestingly enough, I achieved my best time running in that race.  I can remember stumbling across the finish line and nearly fainting from the pace.  Thousands had crossed the line before me, but no one from my cluster was anywhere near me.  Yeaaaa!  I went to the hillside across the way and puked my guts out.  I decided right then and there, no more Doritos before a race!  


Actually, looking back, I thought I would be zapped at the finish line, like a wayward fly, for failing to stay with my group.  Like the computer would throw away my time as a mistake, as a false reading, as an error in the system.  Fortunately, it never did.  I deceived them all!  As a result, my time was my trophy and the one I touted time and time again.  As it turns out, it was also the last time I ran in a race until more than twenty years later.  


My weight, like a demon, found me on that hillside bent over on my knees, retching from the run, and it convinced me to stop this craziness, promising it wouldn’t come back all at once but would spread itself over my forties and fifties, and I would feel good throughout and it would feel right.  My body still believes this though I know it is a lie.        


My doctor with her sports medicine background is a runner.  She looks to be in her late-thirties, she’s thin like a runner, and very pretty.  I had forgotten how pretty she was until I showed up at her office earlier this month for my physical.  She was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a short skirt under an open white lab coat, with stylish boots that went up to her knees.  She told me she runs marathons once or twice a year and has done so since she was a kid.  I immediately decided I loved runners who make the right decisions all of their lives.


Amazingly, she noticed I had lost weight.  When we met three years earlier for my checkup, she suggested I lose ten pounds as a goal.  She didn’t know that, instead, I added more than twenty pounds and, one year later, was the heaviest I have ever been.  Now nearly two years after that, I am more than fifty pounds lighter and heading to new personal records in my ongoing weight-loss.   


“Let’s get you up on the scale and see how well you’ve done,” she said, her face brightening to show a gorgeous smile.  Oh my god!     


I remember, growing up, my doctor was an old geezer who used to give me physicals for school.  He never failed to stick his hands in my pants to search out my scrotum.  “Cough, son,” he would say.  Suddenly, nearing sixty, I yearned for such a complete physical, once again.  (Please, oh please!  Let me cough for you!)  


“Sounds good,” I said to my marathon-runner-of-a-doctor with her sexy brown boots that ran up her thighs.  “Should I take off my clothes?”  


“No you can keep your clothes on,” she said, looking down at her chart on me.  “In fact,” she added, “you can get on the scale just as you are, sweater and shoes and all.”  What?  Ugh!  No way!  Not completely dressed!  I want to be totally, totally naked, just like I am each morning when I humble myself before the scale-god in my bathroom, and, besides, doesn’t it say somewhere that later you’re supposed to check my scrotum?  


Ignoring how pretty she was and those boots that lapped her loins, I mumbled to myself, secretly, as I walked over to her scale, ‘You damn well have got to be kidding me (!), and I’m wearing my “feel good about myself” body too.  Ugh!’  


Just like that my “feel good” attitude popped and hissed like a slithering snake out of the room.  In the act of walking over to the scale, I could feel my depression mounting.  I gained an extra four pounds in just those three steps alone.  The doctor’s reading of the scale, with me dying, standing there fully dressed, added another five pounds, and, when I left her office, I was no longer in love with the quack, but, rather, nearly ten pounds heavier and ready to commit suicide.  


I went directly home to my own scale and quickly turned it over.  I twirled the setting passed “naked truth” and stopped it abruptly on “complete deception in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This is exactly where I needed it to be and, amazingly, when I got on the scale, I had not only re-lost the nine pounds she said I still was carrying, but I even dropped another twenty pounds besides.  Yahoo!  


All of which brings me to this morning and the ongoing fight I am having with my body.  Sure enough, I awoke having gained another pound and a half from yesterday, and yesterday I gained a pound and a half from the day before.  What’s this all about?  My body is clearly in rebellion.  It was only last week at this time that I was a pound away from reaching the sixty-pound milestone.  Now I’m five pounds away and looking ahead to a week of covering the same ground I covered last week, or worse...    


The pudge is winning.  Ounce for ounce, more is entering my body than leaving on any given day.  Screw this!  I have got to get my act together, once and for all!  Stay tuned.  

****           

Pudgy Me 1: Moping Around

I have been grieving lately and though I haven’t experienced a death in my family (thank god!), or in my circle of friends (whew, you never know with that group!), or with any of the cats in my house (bummer!), nonetheless, I have been walking around in a perpetual state of bereavement.  My wife describes it more like ‘moping around’ -- as in her admonition, “Stop moping around!”

Okay, so I have been ‘moping around.’  What the heck is ‘moping around’ anyway?  I googled ‘moping around’ to be sure I understood what my wife was yelling at me in the course of my day, and, sure enough, someone on the internet wrote that ‘moping around’ means “sitting around, doing nothing, and looking miserable – i.e., think ‘teenager.’” Yes!  This definition fits me exactly: I do sit around (– a lot!), I essentially do nothing – according to my wife(!), and lately I have been miserable.  As for thinking like a ‘teenager,’ my wife says I think like a teenager all the time.  She says I act like one half the time too!  

Since I brought up my wife, she would add that I should re-evaluate my emotional priorities.  I guess that’s also true, but what are my emotional priorities anyway?  As I enter this later phase of my life, it seems to me that whatever emotional priorities I have lodged in the system must be embedded so deep that it would take a coal miner rather than a psychiatrist to get at them.  Besides, at this point in my life, my emotional priorities are not meant to be accessible anyway, are they?  Especially not to the casual reader and certainly not to me, and besides, what the hell? – Wouldn’t that be very un-‘teenager’-like?

Anyhow, as much as it seems like this is where I’m going with this blog, this entry is not about ‘moping around’ and discovering my ‘emotional priorities.’  Perhaps, I will save that for a later discussion.  No, this narrative is focused on grieving, and why I feel l have been out of sorts of late.

I went back in my hometown over the holidays and met up with an old friend who took a moment to re-introduce me to his aging mother.  I must say, she looked great.  She was in her mid-eighties and still living in their family home.  She was sharp and cognitive and progressing happily through her life with an infectious smile, a smart swagger, and an obvious thrill for being on top of her game!  How refreshing it was to sit and talk with her.
 
As we got up to go, she looked at me, and, as if finally remembering which one of my friend’s friends I was, she asked me, “Weren’t you the pudgy kid with the red hair back in high school?"

It had been such a pleasant conversation; her statement caught me by surprise – What?  PUDGY???  She smiled at me sweetly.  “What happened to your red hair?” she asked.  

“Oh,” I laughed somewhat stiffly, quickly glancing at my friend and then back at his mother, not reflecting on where my red hair had gone between high school and now but rather on that word, that poofy word “PUDGY!”

– Was I really so pudgy back then that she would remember it 40 years later?
 
– Why wasn’t she asking me where my “pudginess” is now?

– Does she still think I’m pudgy?   

Images of me as a boy, as a father, as a man in the mirror shaving that very same morning flashed instantaneously before my eyes. Am I really that heavy? I decided in a sudden flash I never liked my friend's mother, back then or now.
 
“Ah,” I responded, trying to stay in the moment, “My hair’s been turning white for awhile now.”   I forced a small laugh,”but, at least I still have hair! Ha, ha!”

– How pudgy was I back in high school?  Is this what the girls thought?  My friends thought?  My friends' parents thought?  No wonder none of them would have anything to do with me!

“Aw, don’t mind her,” my pseudo-friend said later as we got into his car to get some beers.  “My mom’s been going senile for awhile now,” he said, noticing my silence.  “She doesn't remember anything. Soon she won’t recognize me at all.”   

“Look,” I said, “I understand why she would wonder about my hair, but, but –“ (what the heck, I had to ask – I’ve worked so hard…)  “ – she doesn’t... she doesn’t think I’m pudgy, does she?’’

“Of course not,” my friend responded way too quickly, looking over at me as he started up the car.  “Everyone can see you lost a ton of weight.”  (A ton! – it wasn’t a ton!  No way!)

“Then why,” I asked, “why didn’t she say, ‘Where did you get that beach body?’”  I was looking at him, sort-of-like pleading for him to agree, you know, in an adult-sophisticated-kind-of-way, but he was staring at the road, speeding quickly out of her cul de sac, like he was desperate for a beer.

“My mom’s also blind,” He mumbled as an afterthought.  “Did I mention that?”

“Oh, that explains it,” I responded.  “Otherwise, she would have noticed my rock hard abs under my shirt, along with my red hair – lighter now, for sure, but still red if you squint just right… “

– Nothing like an old friend’s crazy mom, who should have been put down years ago, to start my depression.  Still, this can’t explain why I have been grieving, and, surely, I can’t blame a blind, old, senile woman for my moping around long after I returned home.

And, hey, so what if I am pudgy, anyway.  There, I said it.  So what – isn’t everybody?

The thing about weight, I decided, is that it hangs on you all the time.  All day.  Some might say, your entire life.  It’s like a mortal, infectious disease.  Catch it, and it won’t let go. It never let’s go.  Or, rather, I should say, I won’t let it go.  I can’t let it go.  For some reason, I just can’t let it be.

I am experiencing an emotional moment, a mourning if you will.  Perhaps, I am grieving for the fifty pounds I lost over the past year-and-a-half, and although one side of me still wants to lose another twenty-five pounds, I think I miss who I was.  Yes, it was dead-weight to the average doctor or cardiologist, and it did nothing for me at all, except get me out-of-breath sooner, and, yes, it looked horrible in the mirror – like I was wearing an outer fat suit on top of my sleek inner lining, but, let’s face it, it was me, it was my dead weight accumulated from years of careful cultivation.  Some people buy furs and mink coats, I like to grow my own...

You might notice, I don’t think I am as comfortable with the new “pudgy me” that I’ve become versus the “fat me” I thought I enjoyed.  Even more importantly, I’m not sure I deserve the gains I have achieved.

A few weeks ago I had the strangest sensation.  I weighed myself early one morning and realized I was at my lowest weight in years – in, literally, something like two decades.  Suddenly I had the most uncomfortable feeling – rather than a sense of joy and elation, I quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed.  It was like I had stolen a candy bar from the drugstore.  (Oh god!)  Now, I ask you, how could anyone be watching if I am standing in the middle of my bathroom with the blinds drawn and the door closed.  I jumped off the scale!  (Damn!)  After standing there in the nude with the shower running, assessing the situation, I got back on the scale again.  (Hmmm...)  I got off it a second time, shook the scale thoroughly, then moved it to a new spot on the floor.  It had been near the sink.  Maybe something was wrong with the floorboards there.  I tried it near the toilet.  (Oh no, this was not good.)

I felt like I was an interloper who somehow had fooled my bathroom scale and even my own body into thinking I had lost more weight than I should have.  It turns out, not only had I passed my “new year’s resolution” for the year but now was in a range I never dreamed possible, at least not so soon.  How could this be?  Yikes, how could I sustain this?

My body and mind rebelled; within days I quickly regained the five or so pounds I had lost and was back to a level within which I could breathe easier.  In fact, as it turns out, in which I could take refuge, as I have been hibernating at this level ever since.

It’s like I have to fight for every pound I lose, and, indeed, if it is a hard-fought war, I will accept the gains I’ve made.  Each month I go through a process of ungodly effort, small achievements, and, finally, token acceptance.  Alternatively, if the battle is too easy, if I drop pounds too quickly, I rebell and lose ground.  For me, I guess, without the angst of fighting to vanquish each ounce, ounce after ounce, it’s not an accomplishment.  Or rather, perhaps, I am having an out-of-body experience, and it’s someone else’s accomplishment, or, perhaps, it’s just an experience not to be valued.  Perhaps, it’s the battle itself and the fight for each inch of ground that provides meaning.

So this is my evolving story of pudgy me.  I am stopping here as still I have a lot to say, but we’ll need to take it one ounce at a time.

****  

My Family Story # 9: When Mother Slapped Allison

Allison Giles McIlhenny

“She slapped me in front of Junior,” Allison said, when I brought up our hired hands on the farm.  It was a blustery Saturday back in May, and I had driven the six hours to Gettysburg the day before.  It was now mid-morning, and I was in the Blue Parrot Bistro, Allison and Holly’s restaurant, watching Allison in the kitchen doing her prep work, getting ready for a Saturday night full of reservations. 

The Blue Parrot kitchen had very little room for standing and conversing, yet any number of people could be found back there watching Allison and her staff – friends, family, salesmen, employees during their off hours, waitresses waiting for customers in the dining room, all talking about the events at hand, the issues in their lives.  I was standing with my back to a large metal sink in front of the main window half way down the room.  What seemed like hundreds of pots and pans had been thrown into the sink, ostensibly to soak, but, perhaps, simply to be avoided.  A long stainless steel table used for prep work was immediately in front of me and my standing there was blocking that side of the aisle.  Allison was standing on the other side of the table slicing hundreds of red peppers with a large, steel carving knife and cupping the slivers into a well-used metal bowl.  Behind her were the warming tables for picking up completed dishes and behind that a steam table, with lids and sauces and thin strands of steam rising into the air.  Beyond the steam table was the industrial heart of Allison’s kitchen – two ovens and a huge black iron stove with odd shaped pots haphazardly arrayed across the many burners.

With Allison firmly in place at her cutting board, it was clear I had to move quickly every time a waiter or cook came into the area, sliding over to the back door near the sink, or movng back to the shelves along the far wall.  Even at the door or against the wall, you had to remain nimble to stay out of the way.  It was like a fluid dance of movement, with the kitchen's many characters spiraling in different directions, yet, with incredible grace throughout, and by entering the room you automatically agreed to participate in the ballet continuously unfolding throughout the day.    

“Mother slapped you?” I asked leaning lightly against the sink, aware of everyone in the room.  This was a heck of a place to have this conversation.  Allison’s hands were holding the tiny peppers while slicing them with the sharp knife. I noticed her fingers, moving quickly with assured dexterity, so much thinner than mine, more wrinkled, and covered with small scars and burns from forty years of cooking in the restaurant. 

“Yep,” Allison responded, barely looking up, wired blonde hair exploding in all directions across her head, wearing faded blue jeans and a light sweater with an old white apron.  “Don’t you remember, our first two hired hands were Harvey and Junior.  They lived in the mobile home near the barn.  Junior was hired after Harvey – don’t you remember?”  When she looked up at me, I nodded like I did, but I was too young at the time; I didn’t remember any of this. 

“Junior was much younger and better looking than Harvey, and Mother acted sweeter around him than with old Harvey,” she said, laughing, getting into her story.  “For some reason Mother took me with her down to the barn to talk to Junior.  After a while, I wanted to tell her something – I don’t remember what – but she wouldn’t let me interrupt.  She told me to be quiet.  I said something like, ‘But he’s only a hired hand!’ – and just like that,” Allison paused, waving her knife in a pirouette across the peppers, “Mother slapped me!”  Allison's eyes were on fire.  “She told me to apologize, but I was in a state of shock.  I was a little girl, and she hit me across my face, right in front of Junior!”

“What did you do?”

“What do you think?  I burst into tears as much from embarrassment as from the sting.  Can you believe it?” Allison flashed her knife, pointing it at me like I had something to do with it.  “Mother never apologized to me either.  She finished talking to Junior, and we went back up to the house.”

****