When life starts cruising along with little to worry about, I begin to worry. I worry about all sorts of things. Like why am I having a good time when everybody else is struggling? I grew up believing that if live is good, something will go wrong.
The bottom line is you can’t smile your way through life. It has to be mixture of frustration, anger and two kilogrammes of helplessness. And if this isn’t happening then you are being set up for a big fall.
These thoughts were running through my head when my wife, one evening after she had had dinner and was scrolling through her Whatsapp messages, said, “Honey you have to get rid of the paunch. I want is a guy with six-pack abs.”
It was more like an order and you can imagine my plight. I had just returned from a hard day at the office only to have a ridiculous demand thrown at me. I tried to explain to her that there was no such thing as six-pack abs and it was made up by Adobe to sell their Photoshop software, but she wouldn’t listen.
I was angry at life for throwing me this challenge. I would have easily handled a leaking tap, a gas cylinder change or an inflated water bill, but six-pack abs were an entire new ball game. I would have to step up my game to achieve this goal or die in the process. She had challenged my manhood and I wasn’t going to take this lying down.
“You’ll have your six-pack ab in a month,” I asserted like a man on a mission, a suicide mission.
That night I scoured the web for information on how to build a six-pack. I also, very gently, ran my fingers along my belly to see if I could detect any evidence of at least a two-pack. I could not.
After reading several articles, some from very dubious sources, I learnt three fundamental truths. 1) The number of guys who have a six-pack are in an absolute minority and can be ignored. 2) The exercise they do in the gym would kill a 52-year-old like me. 3) The chaps who don’t bother about a six-pack get to drink beer.
I wanted to give up, but something within me prompted me to take up the challenge. The next day I met a friend who owned a gym and he said he would give me a six-pack in a month. I was charged up like never before. I had grown up tough and this was the time to call on all that growing-up experience. That night I set the alarm for six in the morning, and woke up at eight.
The experience taught me the fourth fundamental truth: waking up early to go to the gym can be quite a pain.
I made three more attempts to wake up, each time I hiked the volume of the alarm and each time I woke up at eight. It was like my body was not in sync with my goals.
The thought of losing to my wife was like a bee buzzing inside my head. That’s when I thought of another friend, a doctor who always gave me sound advice. “Liposuction might work, but it cannot be selectively done to give you a six-pack,” he said when I asked him if there was a short cut. When I told him about my plan B he said, “Breast implants might be a rage, but there is no such thing as a six-pack implant,” he added, dashing my hopes to the ground.
So it was back to the gym for me. My friend there had a solution to my problem. “There is no need to wake up at six,” he said. “Be practical, wake up and eight and come to the gym, sussegado!”
Now this was a plan that could be implemented.
So that night I set the alarm for eight in the morning, and woke up at 10.
Fifth fundamental truth: body clocks are unreliable.
