There is valuable stuff inside of me. Strong stuff too. The kind of stuff that could run up Grandfather Mountain or Sunset Mountain or Jones Mountain or even the Big Rock Candy Mountain. I am powered by this stuff, although you can’t see it. Somewhere, lurking inside my abdomen, is a six pack just waiting to be unleashed on the pool. The problem, you see, is what Hugh M. Caperton would refer to as “the overburden” aka “the muffin top.” Google it.
I was not born to be a professional cyclist, nor was I born to figure skate. Futbol might have been my thing, but Pancho and Lefty don’t see eye to eye, therefore I do not have binocular vision or decently reliable depth perception. Among competitive runners, I would probably never have really held my own. But back in middle school (which I always want to call Junior High since that is where people 2 or 3 years older than me went. By the time I got there, it was dumb ass middle school, but anyway back then) I could run faster than most of the kids in the gym class. Wearing combat boots. But that is another story for another time.
Tonight’s story has to do with the fact that in High School, I smoked, drank when I could, ate garbage, and grew a muffin top. Grover bought me a pack of cigarettes one time after I proved I could run a mile in under 10 minutes. We had a good time goofing around at the track, what with the warming up and timing and cheering and so forth. But it was also sad to think that I had been able to run before, and all of that was gone.
So now, 20 (@#$% me) years later, I can run again. Not the fastest kid in the gym class, but mine is a respectable pace. Friends complement me, and I act demure knowing all the while that I carry a deadly secret right underneath my shirt. That muffin top is still there. It is perhaps the last remaining vestige of the sad sack of slothful self-pity that I once was. It’s time to wash that detritus down some gully somewhere so the world can see the good stuff underneath.