Working Out

Workouts: they're not the same as I remember them. But then, I don't remember ever really working out much until recently discovering I had accidentally become overweight. "Accidentally"... yeah, I kept slipping in the kitchen and falling face first into an ever-replenishing supply of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia. Every time I'd try to get up, I'd slip on the schmear of ice cream across the kitchen floor, SPLAT! Face-first into a bag of Cheetos. I was quite accident prone that way.


My whole life I'd been thin as a rail. I even took weight gainers: every kind of chocolate chalk or strawberry shit whey protein bomb you could imagine. I ate dough for breakfast. I ate steak and potatoes, bobbing in a tidal pool of butter. If it came in Crisco, I'd have thirds. I ate dough and drank the pie filling afterward. Then it was time for lunch.


Nothing ever phased my physique.

Suddenly it was like hitting a wall: my metabolism crumpled into a comatose heap virtually on my birthday. Six months later, I was moderately misshapen. Now I have to SERIOUSLY work out. Before, I'd just do a sit-up or a pushup and be like, "Yeah, I remember how to do them."

And when you get older, workouts change. Or at least the pain does. It shifts. There seems to be a 48 hour delay on the soreness. I think for the first 24 hours your body is like, "What the fuck, man?" It's just an assessment period, a period of shock. Then, two days later, when the damage has been fully analyzed, the affected muscles retaliate: first by becoming listless and useless, like rebellious two year olds being dragged across the floor of a Target: "No. No no no no no. I don't want to." They refuse to cooperate, and when my brain pulls rank on them they begrudgingly function after issuing one provision: We're going to cause you great pain. It may last for hours, or it may last for days, but for what you've done to us you can be sure of one thing -- we are going to cause you great pain.