A Husband and Father

Too Lazy to Live

Posted by The Author , Sunday, May 9, 2010 11:04 PM

Years ago while on the way back to my wife's hometown in Michigan following a mini second honeymoon in Chicago we stopped for fast food. While eating my curly fries I assumed the persona of an overweight-financially and educationally challenged white rural female. I remarked how the fat the fries were cooked in was the nectar of the gods and how all that "health food mumbo-jumbo" had no bearing on my free-bird flag loving lifestyle. I continued the thick voiced soliloquy with a diatribe on the majority of America and it's pretentious ways. It is a memory of some very serious laughter. We were headed east on I-94; probably somewhere around Kalamazoo or Battle Creek, it was raining and I was smoking in the car with the window cracked. We laughed so hard; especially when someone resembling my assumed persona drove right by. Good times. [Late Entry: My Wife just reminded me of the portion of the act where I explained that salad was just a "Delivery Device for the manna that was Ranch Dressing..."]

That is the memory that stuck in my head when I thought of the title for this post. I thought of titling this post "Fat Entitled and American" but that would have put too much political emphasis on the article. This post is the initial response to a Doctor's Visit two weeks ago. [Background: I quite smoking cigarettes and tobacco products of any kind about three months ago. I put on twenty pounds quick as a bunny.] 


It turned out that I was a little late on my scheduled physical. So I went in, showed that I was able to hear, see and that blood still pumped well enough in my veins to provide the requisite sample. I knew I put on a couple pounds but given my rank (I'm in the military) no one would really have the stones to look me in the eye and call me on it... Then the labs came back.


Them: "Chief, your cholesterol is very high and you have hypertension..."

Me: Excuse me?

Them: (My translation) "Chief, With respect, you're a lazy fat f@#k who doesn't exercise enough, you eat too much salt, red meat, fast food by god you drink too much. And if you ask me you are an angry pr!ck."

 Breathe Dude...

Well. What do you say? You don't . You pack your gear and go home for the day. And you quietly freak the f@#k out. I did the right thing after about five minutes of some serious internal monologue. I called my wife. I told her exactly what was on the table. She was surprisingly calm and supportive (at least from the perspective of a man who assumed his first heart attack would come... well, now.) She pledged her uber-support of my professed immediate life change and all in all made me smile. I even made a smart decision. Instead of turning left and having one more Carl's Junior Five Dollar Jalapeno Burger I turned right and got a foot long turkey and ham at Subway (No chips and a Diet Coke).

See, before that day I was a red meat eating, cigarette smoking (in spirit) whiskey swilling American bad ass... or so I thought...

Fact is, I realized that I was an idiot. I was killing myself. For a guy whose parents passed before he could graduate high school (granted they had seven children before me and were 47 and 50 at the time of my birth) I realized I sure had been living a free wheeling f@#k all lifestyle.  I realized that through position, rank and stature I had worked myself into an entitled self destructive bacchanal of a 40 something heart attack and early life insurance payoff culminating in fatherless children and a widowed wife.

For about ten days I have counted ever calorie. I have measure every single moment. I (and my wonderful supportive wife) have begun to run every morning. I have even started working out again. As I am the cook in the family we are all paying a little more attention to "serving size" and daily intake. My water intake now far exceeds my coffee or whiskey intake and little else save green tea enters my newly ribbon cut temple.

I will soon be a lean mean sexy mofo... Okay, no. Not really. And even if that were true, I don't give a damn about that. What I do care about is dancing with my daughters at their weddings (and having a heart strong enough to endure the bar bill). I want to meet my grandchildren. I want to meet my great-grandchildren. I want to be an old curmudgery pain in the ass to to my wife... Forever!

And I will. I am no longer Too lazy too live. After just a week I am proud to say that my blood pressure is low-normal. Cholesterol we'll check next month. But that doesn't matter.  I feel good. I'm not headed back to sloth. I plan to live long enough to annoy the hell out of my old curmudgery children!