- There's sane news and insane news here on The Mountain
this week.
-
- The sane news is that I let the brown hair dye Gwen the
Beautiful use on me several months ago grow out and have no intention whatsoever
of trying that trick again.
-
- The insane news is that I'm still not fully reconciled
to growing old gracefully and have started fighting it in another, probably
even more ridiculous way.
-
- Exercise.
-
- Weight training, to be precise.
-
- Although I can think of another term for it:
-
- Self-torture.
-
- Yep, there's nothing like taking that desperate desire
to regain lost youth and putting it face-to-face with a multi-station professional
gym set, a few dumbbells, and a leftover Inquisition device called a "neck
strap" to bring out the inner masochist in a man.
-
- Everyday, it's Larry B's fantasy perfect physical self
versus Larry B's all too real imperfect physical self in the storage shed
we've renamed "The Gym."
-
- I train in the morning, before distractions (formerly
known as "real life duties and recreation") get in the way.
-
- That means waking up, pulling on my official gym outfit
of sweatpants, sweat socks, and the tattered blue-and-gold P.E. sweatshirt
I've kept since high school, downing a cup of coffee, letting out the dogs,
feeding the horses, and positioning myself at the various stations of the
apparatus Wanda the Arkansas Angel supplied for the express purpose of
Gwen's rehab from her stroke.
-
- It means grunting and groaning and pushing and pulling
and sweating and shaking and watching my life pass before my eyes with
each agonizing rep.
-
- It means reminding myself to breathe and cursing myself
for panting and remembering how much easier it was to recover from this
kind of exertion back in the day.
-
- Accompanied by the following refrain:
-
- "One never two again three never, never four
again "
-
- And on and on for what seems ad infinitum even though
the number seldom gets past 10.
-
- After which I make my wobbly-legged way back into the
house, scarf down my breakfast of one slice of toast and more coffee, wait
for various body parts to stop spasming and get back into bed.
-
- Know what happens then? Well, four mornings out of five
Gwen turns toward me, opens her innocent hazel eyes, and says, in a voice
still all whispery from sleep, "Did you take a shower?"
-
- Which (and it took me way too long to figure this out)
really means, "Take a shower before you get into this bed!"
-
- In other words, no matter how early it is, or how much
I've exhausted myself, there ain't gonna be no goin' back to sleep. Because
who ever felt anything but revived after a good shower? It's a temporary
feeling to be sure, but for me it lasts just long enough to fool me into
thinking I'm ready for the day.
-
- Notice, by the way, what I said I've been having for
breakfast. A single slice of toast. That's because in order to encourage
the hands of the Larry B. body clock to spin backwards I'm also employing
the dread "D" word.
-
- As in "Diet."
-
- And not just any diet, no sir. I've put myself on the
same diet that got me into shape back when Jerry Ford was President of
these United States. It's a diet I got from Lou (the Incredible Hulk) Ferrigno
when he was a champion bodybuilder and a good friend.
-
- I don't remember what Lou called it, but in my mind it's
always been the "If You Like It You Can't Eat It" diet. For reasons
way too obvious to anyone who's ever eaten anything they've liked.
-
- Like the exercise, the diet worked pretty well once upon
a time - except for that heart attack I had in the gym - which is why I'm
punishing myself with it now.
-
- So am I feeling younger? Stronger? More fit? Let me put
it this way. I've lost a pound a week over the last three months, and I'm
this close to wearing the same size I did 25 years ago. My heart rate is
down. My blood pressure, too.
-
- But everywhere I go people say, "You OK? Your face
is drawn. You look so tired."
-
- And every night I think, "Ah, blessed sleep "
followed by, "Oh no! When I wake up tomorrow I've got to hit the gym!"
-
- And I keep wondering how many people end up old before
their time because of the very means they've chosen to return to their
youth.
-
-
- Copyright C 2007 by Larry Brody. All rights reserved.
-
- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org. Brody, his wife and their dogs,
cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County, Arkansas. The other residents
of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination.
|
