I’m Falling Apart

Let's hear it for a truly inspired, dedicated guy. I lost a whole one percent of my body weight this past week. Damn right. Stop the presses. We have a winner here.

Yep. I'm down from 205 to 203 pounds and gaining steam, not pounds. Someday you will be witness to a genuine transformation from a complete swine to a lean, mean, slightly broken down machine. I think I'm doing a little better than my wife, Regina, who also weighed herself last week.

I'm not at liberty to mention her weight here. It's fair to say she'd probably kill me. In fact, I fought to keep her from killing herself when the scale screamed in bright red digits just how far she has sunken into blubbery despair. Let's just say it was all I could do to get the knife out of her hands before she plunged it into her stomach. When the poor girl realized it was just a puny two-inch paring knife that wouldn't penetrate her vital organs anyway, she just started sobbing. It was all so sad.

I've learned to accept the fact that I do not resemble the guy I once was. Whose does? It's not just a weight thing. It's a broken this and beat up that thing. My body is beginning resemble the shirt of a slob. You can spot every morsel of food that accidently fell short of his mouth and left a historical marker on the garment. I wouldn't mind it so much if my injuries were something to brag about as if they reflected the life of a man who lived fearlessly and dangerously fighting the good fight in honor of God and country.

"Sure, buddy," I could say. "That scar on my leg is where I took a piece of shrapnel back in '67 while I was pulling my pal, Joe, from a rice paddy outside Da Nang while under fire from the gooks. Fucking Charlie was a motherfucker."

But my injuries aren't like that. Sure, there is a sense of swagger that comes with saying most of your aches are horse associated. I can point to my collar bone and boast of having a steel plate. People mistakenly assume I fell off while riding. The fools! I quickly correct them and declare that my horse and I both plunged at a full gallop face first into the dirt while racing against my wife and her animal. However, fear of having my insurance claim denied meant I had to tell the doctors and nurses that the accident came from falling off a ladder while cleaning gutters. I used to be a carpenter for Christ's sake and I handle ladders and scaffolding with the best of them. Can you imagine the shame?

There is little satisfaction telling people I broke my right hand like an idiot on the metal buckle of the halter on my wife's horse. I was gallantly trying to protect her as she was about to get kicked into next week while sticking a vaccine the size of a knitting needle into the horse's ass. Someone once told me that the best way to get a misbehaving horse's attention was to give it punch on its cheek. He forgot to tell me to take the halter off first.

My other injuries and ailments are less glamorous. Pathetic would be a better word. Like when I recently ran into a door in the dark and actually cracked a rib. I couldn't even go swimming in the ocean while vacationing in Cancun, the damn thing hurt so badly. I'm also about to get surgery on my right shoulder. The MRI showed I have bone spurs which is a nice way of saying arthritis. That's right. Art-fucking-rites. Think about it.

Last week summed it all up when I dropped a bowling ball on the little right toe while attending a birthday party at the Black Cat bowling alley in New Carlisle, Ind. of all places. It was gravity combined with a 16 pound orange and black swirled bowling ball versus the poor tiny toe. Now the sad little smashed bastard looks like a grape and I walk around like I've still got a piece of shrapnel in my leg: and, no medal to show for it. If it doesn't start feeling better soon I plan on cutting the digit off and telling people I lost it to frostbite when I was scaling Mt. Everest.