Dave Barry - Bad Habits

Lately, I have noticed large numbers of people staggering along the sides of major highways, trying to get in shape. I think they have the right idea: most of us Americans are out of shape. I know for a fact that I am.

When I was in high school, my friends and I were in terrific shape. Our bodies were fine-tuned machines. We would routinely drink quarts of warmish beer, then perform feats of great physical prowess. For example, during the Halloween Dance we carried a 1962 Volkswagen all the way up the front steps of Pleasantville High School, right into the lobby. I bet we couldn’t do that today. I bet you couldn’t, either.

Now I grant you that most of us no longer feel any great need to drink warm beer and carry Volkswagens into high schools, but the point is that if some emergency arose, if for some reason involving national security we had to carry a Volkswagen into a high school, we couldn’t do it. We’d go a few steps, then we’d drop the Volkswagen and collapse on the ground, gasping and heaving, and that would be the end of our national security. So I figure it’s time to get in shape.

But jogging is not the way to do it. For one thing, jogging kills your brain cells. The Army has known this for years; it forces recruits to jog every day, on the theory that some of them will lose so many brain cells that they will eventually reenlist. Your really dedicated joggers know it, too; in fact, it’s one of the main reasons they jog. The idea is that if you’re troubled about your job or world affairs, you go out and jog until you’ve killed whatever brain cells are responsible for those thoughts. The problem is that you may also kill the brain cells that remember your name and address, in which case you keep right on jogging, sometimes for days. This is what has happened to the people you see jogging along major highways, the ones with vacant expressions on their faces: they left home as nuclear physicists, heart surgeons, corporation presidents, and so on, but after a few hours most of them have library paste for brains.

Remember Jimmy Carter? Every day at the White House he used to wake up at the crack of dawn, develop some brilliant plan to save the economy, then head out for his morning jog. His aides would find him stumbling around hours later, sweaty and confused, his economic plan gone forever. Jimmy might have stood a chance in the 1980 elections if he had run against another jogger, but instead he faced Ronald Reagan. Ron has his horses jog for him and thus is able to preserve what brain cells he has, although I suspect his horses are fairly stupid.

My other objection to jogging is that even if you manage to jog yourself into shape, you still don’t look all that great. I mean, look at marathon runners: they appear gaunt and desperately hungry, like refugees wearing numbers. They’re always snatching scraps of food from spectators and stuffing them (the scraps of food) into their mouths. If you were to toss, say, a side of raw beef into their path, they’d all dive for it, teeth bared, and that would be the end of the marathon.

So I have rejected jogging as a way to get in shape. In fact, I was about to give up altogether when I discovered body-building magazines. Body-building magazines are published for people, mostly male, whose idea of being in shape is to have muscles the size of lawn tractors. You’ve probably seen these magazines: they’re full of pictures of people who have smeared Vaseline all over their bodies and are wearing bathing suits no larger than a child’s watchband; they are trying to smile in a relaxed manner but end up with more of an intense grin, because they have enormous muscles lunging out from all over their bodies, and Lord only knows how many bizarre chemical substances coursing through their veins.

These people obviously do not jog—I doubt they ever leave their gymnasiums, for fear their muscles will lunge out and kill innocent bystanders—but they are obviously in terrific shape. At least they look as if they’re in terrific shape, which is the important thing. If Jimmy Carter had spent his time body-building instead of jogging, he would be president today. His aides would have carried him into the presidential debates and propped him up against his lectern, and when it was time for him to make his opening statement, he would have just stood there, Vaseline shimmering on his muscles, grinning intensely at the audience. Who would have dared to vote against him?

So I’ve been reading body-building magazines, hoping to pick up some tips on getting in shape. The idea seems to be to lift a lot of heavy objects until you get dense. Density is much sought-after in the body-building world. For example, Muscle Digest magazine, in its October issue, refers to one promising body builder as “one of the most dense body-builders in senior level competition.” Evidently this is considered high praise.

So I plan to lift heavy objects, starting with my typewriter and working up to a 1962 Volkswagen, until I get fairly dense, after which I intend to smear Vaseline on my body and maybe run for president.

I say we give the medical community two more weeks to cure the common cold, and, if it doesn’t, we turn the problem over to a more competent outfit, like the Sony Corporation. Sometimes I wonder what the medical community is thinking. We give it buddles of money to buy office furniture and white coats and other medical devices, and all it seems to want to do is invent obscure new operations nobody you know or I know ever needs:

CHICAGO—A team of surgeons at the Warpfinger Medical Institute here has successfully implanted a tiny electronic device into the right tonsil of a fifteen-year-old boy. “We don’t really know why we did it,” said a spokesman. “We just had this tiny electronic device and this fifteen-year-old boy, so we figured, whY not? Next week we’re going to install the battery.

Meanwhile, millions of people are out here getting common colds and generally making the world a tackier place to live in. You have two kinds of cold victims: your nose blowers and your snorters. For overall ability to make you want to walk out of restaurants, I’d have to give the edge to the nose blowers. And they are everywhere. Americans think nothing of public nose-blowing. They encourage it in their young. My fourth-grade teacher once spent two hours instructing us on nose-blowing. She never married.

As far as I can tell, the only groups trying to do anything useful about the common cold are the cold-remedy companies that advertise on TV:

(The scene opens in a pleasant suburban home. The husband walks in through the front door and speaks to his wife, who is wearing a bathrobe and lying on the floor.)

HUSBAND: Are you ready to go visit my father at the Home for Sickly Old People?

WIFE: I don’t think I can, dear. It’s this darn cold. I have a fever of 112

degrees and I can no longer move anything on the left side of my body.

HUSBAND: Here, try some Phlegm-B-Gone.

WIFE: Phlegm-B-Gone?

HUSBAND: Phlegm-B-Gone.

(The scene shifts to an impressive office with a big desk. On a shelf behind the desk is a huge collection of books. It is actually the complete Hardy Boys series, but the camera doesn’t get close enough for you to realize this. A medical-looking actor, wearing a white coat, is standing in front of the desk, holding a clipboard.)

MEDICAL-LOOKING ACTOR: Medical tests show that Phlegm-B-Gone, a collection of medical ingredients, is extremely medical when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care. Get back on your feet with Phlegm-B-Gone.

(The scene shifts to the Home for Sickly Old People.)

WIFE: Gosh, that Phlegm-B-Gone, with a collection of medical ingredients, is great! I’m back on my feet again with only a slight limp!