Work it out

I went to the gym the other day. When I signed in, I swiped a little key card, and my name came up on a computer screen, along with a little information about me. For example, it read “Number of visits this year – 1.” Well, it’s only January.

But underneath that it read, “Number of visits last year – 1.” Wow, now I’m getting mocked by a computer. It was a scene right out of 2001.

OK, so last year was a tough year, but this year I’m committed to at least tripling my workouts from the previous 12 months.

I went into the locker room and began changing clothes, and caught something out of the corner of my eye. “Whoa,” I said to myself, “when did they start letting women come in here? And ugly ones, at that!” Of course I soon realized I was looking in the mirror, and those breasts were mine. Now it made sense why that woman had a goatee.

I have to tell you, being this out of shape is making me miserable. I get winded changing the channel on the TV. I used to be in pretty good shape. Now I just have a pretty bad shape. I don’t have washboard abs, I have washtub abs. Babies look at my chest and lick their lips. I spotted myself, or at least my backside, on one of those TV news segments about how Americans are obese.

The tightness of my clothes has become an issue. When I wear blue jeans, I’m afraid that at any minute the button is going to pop and become a small missile. When I take them off, it looks I have tattooed the word “Levi’s” backwards just under my belly button.

My first workout of the year was not particularly strenuous. I got on the treadmill and put it on the “Old man walking to the front of the room to collect his bingo prize” setting. Then I bumped it up to “Teenager working in a retail store” speed. Pretty soon I was sweating like a Tennessee fan taking a drug test (they always worry that they didn’t study enough). Since I wasn’t sure anybody around me knew CPR, I cut the workout short at about 20 minutes.

Hey, it’s a start. I didn’t get this big overnight. I’m going to ramp up my workouts and cut back on my eating and before long I’ll be able to drive home without unbuttoning my pants, and I’ll be able to take my shirt off in the summer at the beach without somebody calling Sea World and reporting an escape. I may not look like Fabio, but I can at least stop looking like a slightly-hairy pregnant woman, and I’ll make that stupid ridiculing computer eat its words.