Not that I’ve ever put much faith in it, but there’s an old
saying that goes something like, “You can’t be too rich or too thin.”
Someone ought to tell my doctor that.
Not the rich part. As a journalist, I was never going to
make much.
The other half of the quote is more applicable since I’ve
always been on the slender side, largely due to pure genetics, favoring the
paternal side of the inheritance lottery, not that I had a real choice.
It was sort of like being born Catholic, just part of the
deal.
Growing up, like everyone else, my body went through the
usual changes, but the taller I got, the more my weight lagged behind. As a
teenager I got used to being called “skinny” or “slats” or “stick,” all sorts
of names that made me self-conscious about going to the town swimming pool, not
wanting to bare so much in public.
Sometimes, my mother would attempt to reassure me by
invoking the other side of my genetic blueprint, saying, “You’ve got McCluskey
shoulders,” which I appreciated very much, but that didn’t stop me from asking
her to buy some Nutrament, a weight-gain milkshake mix I’d seen advertised
in magazines.
But, like sea monkeys, Mexican jumping beans and other
worthless products I saw in print, Nutrament failed to deliver.
I was the 98-pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I mean growing up skinny had a lot of drawbacks, but
getting humiliated on a beach in front of a pretty girl was not one of them
since A), I seldom had a girlfriend and B), I rarely saw the ocean.
The only real hardship I faced was when it came to buying
dress-up clothes, stuff like long-sleeved shirts and blazers with matching
trousers. The salesman would take the tape measure from around his neck and
start the measurement process, noting lengths and widths, occasionally giving
forth audible sighs of unhappiness.
“Allow me to recheck my figures,” he’d say, apologetically,
but I knew that wouldn’t help. My neck was too thin, my arms were too long, and
my waist and legs, please. The numbers didn’t compute.
One of my friends put it best, saying, “Better wait 'til the
circus comes to town,” not in any malicious way, just to be humorous.
Once I’d negotiated the social and academic minefield that
was high school, I headed off to college, where, for two full years, I was
absent from the dating game, probably owing to the fact men outnumbered
women by a 7-1 margin, which meant every time a guy approached a girl, she
knew there were six behind him.
Not the kind of odds that favored any sort of sustained
relationship.
But then, mirabile dictu, the impossible happened, and for
four glorious months, the University of Notre Dame bore witness to a miracle
that outshone the Golden Dome itself, something even more astonishing than the
least likely Fighting Irish comeback.
I became involved with a girl who turned my world upside
down.
Of course, it all went down the drain around New Year’s, and
all I recall about our splitting was her calling me an “ectomorphic
narcissist,” a pithy phrase I’ve held onto for lo these 50 years.
Allow me to translate her parting shot: I was a selfish,
skinny guy with little muscle mass, long limbs and a naturally fast metabolism.
Since those days and nights of collegiate craziness,
wandering around without a map and praying my GPA managed to hover around dean’s list quality, I hardly ever worried about my weight.
When I tipped the scales at over 210 pounds a decade or so
after graduation, I understood that even at 6-feet-5-inches tall, I was
knocking on the wrong door, so I cut back on snacks and other grazing
couch-potato fare, trying to limit my intake of bad carbs.
I wouldn’t say no to a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms and
sausage every now and then, nor would I turn my back on a dozen or so spicy
garlic wings, but those were special occasions. Mostly, I cooked basic
casseroles or pasta dishes with lots of veggies.
Since my wife and I got together in 1987, we’ve been up and
down the Atlantic Coast from Bar Harbor, Maine to Key West, Florida, so I’ve had
more than my fill of seafood, especially shellfish. I believe I could subsist
on steamed oysters, crab claws and lobster tails for the rest of my life if not
for the prohibitive expense.
These days I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m thirsty
and sleep when I’m tired, just a simple routine for a 70-year-old guy.
But now, thanks to a new doctor in town, I’m starting to
worry.
“Do you know,” she asked the other day when I was seeking
relief from a chronic cough, “that you’ve lost 13 pounds since March?”
She went on to cite my 100-over-62 blood pressure reading, a
figure I was proud of since I’ve been fighting hypertension since the '80s.
But now it seems I’ve gone too far the other way.
Guess it’s time to dive into a seafood platter, inhale an
unholy amount of wings and set my sights on bringing up my numbers.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page, where recipes for life are frequently on the menu.
