STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More

Share and Enjoy [?]

We were enjoying a great day on my friends’ boat.

I had no agenda for that day, May 8, other than to admire the scenic beauty as we tooled up the Intracoastal Waterway.

We saw dolphins at play and some osprey adolescents, not ready to leave their nest, it seemed, but quite willing to cheep their beaks off for mom or pop to get back soon with food.

After oohing and aahing at the mega-homes of Port Royal and noticing all the “for sale” signs along Keewaydin Island, we beached the nifty bow rider to stretch our legs and have lunch — tasty “sunwraps” from Big Al’s on Marco Island.

As we ate, my friend asked a question. Our wives listened attentively.

“What would you think about the two of us having a weight-loss contest, with a significant cash award to the winner?” he asked.

I agreed immediately, having been thinking about making another serious effort at slimming before a significant birthday some four months later.

The wives professed their full support, a little too eagerly, I thought at the time, but understandably so.

As I slowly rewrapped and stowed the second half of my “sunwrap” and speared a cherry tomato from a Tupperware container, I began considering whether I was up to it.

“We have to set the pot, the winnings, high enough to make us both take the bet seriously,” he said and I agreed.

Next ground rule — we’d go by percentage of body weight lost, not raw (pardon the expression) poundage, because he is 4 inches taller and, at the moment, about 15 pounds heavier than I.

Next rule — we would weigh in on a doctor’s scale that same day and not weigh in together again on the same scale until Sept. 21.

After that, no more rules, no periodic weigh-in sharing, no dreadful conversations along the way, no diet chatter, no calorie comparisons, no snotty references to Tony Orlando on that diet-food commercial.

We would have no boundaries on what either of us could eat or drink during our four-plus months of effort to slim ourselves and fatten our wallets.

So with dollar signs in our eyes and visions of svelteness in our hoary imaginations, we stepped on the scales one at a time and validated each other’s bad news. It was ugly enough to intensify our resolve. Yet questions lingered.

At our ages — especially mine, six years older than my friend, the insolent pup — are we silly to try to do this?

I mean, I see those natives in Papua New Guinea on National Geographic TV. Those tribal elders are Q-Tip thin, yet they have pot bellies of a sort. So are all of us supposed to get, um, that way, at this age?

The moment of abject weakness passes with the realization that antibiotics, sunscreen and younger wives have been keeping smart men on the frantic fitness trek in the past few generations.

We can’t let go so soon, right? Or if we already have, must we not try and try again to see our shoes without a mirror and to enter a room without everyone there hearing us breathe?

But what if the contest creates two less pudgy enemies? It is, we decide, worth the risk. The bet is on.

To be continued. ...

---

E-mail Don Farmer at don@donfarmer.com.