Hard as it is to believe, I’m a guy that really used to go to the gym every day and actually really cared about how I looked. Don’t worry, I’m still that same shallow person underneath; I’m just underneath a lot more layers now. I wasn’t always so self-conscious until people started reacting oddly to me.

After the last tuxedo incident I wrote about, I thought it better to go out and buy a tuxedo instead of renting one. I was interrupted while browsing the selections by the sales guy who felt the need to yell at me across the store “Hey! What are you doing over there? You need to be in the short and portly section down here!” As if I wanted everyone in the store to know that the height Gods might have snubbed their noses down at me but the fat Gods had given me an overabundance of gifts. And who calls someone “portly” anyway – is that even a real word? As funny as I didn’t think he was, he didn’t seem at all fazed when I yelled back “Thanks asshole; do you have any portly shoes to match this?” Some people might have gotten the hint at that point, but he then proceed to follow me into the dressing room and lecture me on how short people look even shorter when wearing the vest of a three piece suit as I was undressing. I’m not sure why, but I always seem to find the most helpful people out there…    

If you were to ask my sister Marlene to share her sage advice on the topic of me gaining a few pounds, she’d gently say “It’s because he’s fucking lazy!” but I like to think of it as being conservative with my energy. The kind and gentle words of a mentally unstable sister can be so soothing sometimes…

I’ve gained so much weight, that if you were to look at my driver’s license picture (which was taken when I was in college, when I was younger and, more importantly, when I was hotter) it looks like a distant relative. You know how when people look at a fake ID and squint and then tell you, unconvincingly, how you could almost pass for the person in the photo? It’s just like that although it looks like I have swallowed the person in my picture. Seriously, people look at that photo and then look back at me, and then back one more time at the photo to make sure it’s really me. They usually furrow their brow as if unsure how to respond and although no one has actually said it out loud yet, I know it’s only a matter of time. I just know that they’re looking at that photo and thinking “What happened you fat fuck?” Don’t tell me that people wouldn’t say that because that’s the type of thing that I would say to someone!   

I almost feel like I need to explain to them that I broke my left ankle twice – two years in a row on April 22^nd actually. It takes a real uncoordinated ass to do that but I’ll wear that crown. Whenever I try to offer that up into the conversation, my ever-supportive wife likes to remind me that it has been five years since I broke my ankle for the second time so it’s probably healed by now enough for me to start exercising again…She also likes to throw in for good measure, that three Presidents have been in office since I was last considered “in shape” so the excuse doesn’t really hold water anymore.

Would she say that to Joe Theismann about his injury? I thought not. As a side note, that is the first and only time you’re ever likely to see a sports analogy used in anything I write. It’s not because I don’t think sports analogies offer anything to the dialogue, it’s because that’s the only sports factoid I actually know and to be perfectly honest, I really only know that one because it was in The Blind Side.

I know very scant bits about sports and can offer little by the way of anecdotal evidence unless you’re referring to the subject of an Oscar-nominated movie. I wouldn’t know Lebron James from Rick James, but you get me started about The Fighter, Field of Dreams, or Rocky and I’ll light this mother up.  

I was always way too uncoordinated to ever play sports anyway. The last time I tried was the first time I broke my left ankle. Picture it like a mathematical equation if you will: volleyball + a really tall bitch spiking the ball in my face + short stubby me + a one-time jump trying to block a shot that was three feet over my head = Emergency Room, Crutches and then surgery. Get the picture?

Don’t even get me started about that surgery on my ankle because Like B.A. won’t get on an airplane, I will never go in that hospital again. They gave me a sedative and my wife and sister walked me down the hallway as the attendant rolled me towards the elevator and into surgery. I had taken my contact lenses out and couldn’t see anything past my nose. As we passed by, another attendant asked the attendant pushing me to drop a sample off at the lab and then proceeded to toss the sample on the stretcher and it landed next to me. I was squinting like mad to make it out for sure, but I knew it was shit in a bag and I looked to my wife and sister for help.

 Little use they were, because they were looking at each other trying not to laugh. The only thing protecting me from a log of someone’s shit was a thin layer of cotton that the hospital was calling a sheet! The last thing I remember before the sedative knocked me out was me trying to sit up and get off that stretcher because I was so worked up and muttering over and over “There’s shit in that bag…Oh God, There’s someone’s shit in that bag…” No, I am not exaggerating and I am not mistaken – THEY LITERALLY PUT A CLEAR PLASTIC BAG FULL OF SHIT ON TOP OF ME!

My biggest fear in life had been realized and where was my wife during it? Laughing in my face! I might have to go back and rewatch our wedding video, but I’m pretty sure that we covered this in the vows. If it is at all still unclear Honey, please let me remedy that right now because to me “in good times and in bad times” actually means that I vow not to let someone transport a bag full of shit on my spouse!!! 

Incidentally, the second time I broke my left ankle on April 22^nd was exactly one year after the first time I did it. No volleyball this time, but I went out with friends to “celebrate” my anniversary and my finally being able to walk unassisted after a year of surgery, physical therapy, wearing a boot cast up to my knee, walking with crutches, falling with crutches, and then walking with a cane like every pimp should. I got drunk that night and left the bar to get into a cab towards home when I tripped stepping off the curb. I twisted my ankle and smashed head first into the rear quarter panel of the cab as I was screaming in agony on the ground clutching that damn ankle again.

One would think that in that situation, a normal person might get out and help someone that had fallen, but the cab driver leaned over the front seat and yelled out the open back door towards me “Are you getting in or not?” As I tried to crawl off the ground and into the back seat, he asked me “where to?” I just cringed and muttered “Hospital – I think I broke my ankle again.” The nurses and doctor thought it was so funny and so ironic that I somehow managed to break the same ankle on the same date two years in a row, but you know who didn’t think it was funny: My wife who was in Florida with her sister. At least the second time, I didn’t break a piece of the bone along with the ankle and need to have another surgery but I was back in that cast and back on those crutches for months again…       

I hope that you weren’t expecting a positive, lesson-learned ending to this post: That’s not me. I will admit that I have gained a little weight and while others might waste time with vows to lose weight this time of year, I am actually heading the other route. I’m vowing right here and now to gain at least ten more pounds over the next month to spite all of those people on a diet!

Screw you! Next time your stomach is growling or you’re tired from getting up early to go to the gym and you’re nibbling on carrots for lunch, picture me and my McRib sandwich laughing as I pass by on the obesity train. Next stop – Elastic waistband pants, Chubb Rubb, and medical intervention with the lap band surgeon! CHOO CHOO!