My Redacted Life ... health

Been thinking about going to the gym. Also thinking about not going. It’s Friday and I’m tired. Also, gyms are funny places that make me think. The most out-of-shape folks are on the machines with the most moving parts. The most fit-looking are those walking around the track. The most muscular are the weight-lifters. The angriest-looking are on treadmills, and the ones who most look like they are having fun are the kids playing basketball. I think about lessons of life one can learn from the gym. It’s a microcosm of life.

Mostly I think about how a gym saved my life once. It happened this way.

In December 1968, I returned from overseas and reported to a U.S. Naval ship stationed in Charleston, South Carolina. Two days after checking on board, I had to stand the midwatch and forgot to bring cigarettes. I had been up to, depending on how the security watches in Da Nang fell, maybe three packs of Marlboros a day. A day earlier, at the ship’s store, I had purchased a carton of cigs for $2.10, or 21 cents a pack. I had opened one pack, but, as I say, I had left it in my bunk.

Well, there ain’t much going on below decks on a navy ship at three o’clock in the morn after midrats, so I was stuck for four hours without a smoke. When someone relieved me, I went straight to bed for I didn’t know if the “smoking lamp” was on above decks.

Next morning, I got to thinking. I’d gone something like 12 hours without a butt. I’d just hold out until noon. I’ve never smoked a cigarette since. Two months later, I gave the unused carton to a shipmate. I laugh at the ads about using chemicals to quit smoking. Hell, it ain’t hard. You just quit, that’s all. Pharmaceuticals are for sissies.

You do gain weight though. At least I did. In the old Navy, I don’t know about the new—they seem a little gentrified to me—you could eat four meals a day if you stayed up long enough. Then they had a “gedunk” stand that opened for a break in the morning. And, of course. they sold beer in the clubs on the beach. Let's just say that I partook of opportunities.

I didn’t transfer out of the Navy two years later as much as I waddled out. They almost didn’t let me go due to high blood pressure. At least that’s what they said. I thought they were bluffing and told them so. Anyway, I landed in Little Rock, Arkansas in the company of a splendiferous young woman who didn’t seem to mind my affection for carbohydrates. I don’t know what she saw in me but it surely wasn’t manly heartthrob type stuff.

Things limped along. Then we bought an old Victorian house. My corpulence began to acknowledge its inherent weaknesses and I decided to do something about my weight. I was 30 years old and about to die.

Then there appeared the Downtown YMCA at Sixth and Broadway. My life changed forever.

Stay tuned.

Fat, dumb, and married
to a beautiful woman is
no way to go through life.