One and two and three and four… and left and right and back and front… bend and stretch for the remote control!

Oh, hey!  Get some loose clothing and join me in some exercise.  Aaaand bend and sit and stretch those legs and reach and stretch and… put your feet on that stool over there and grab a beer.  We’re not actually doing any exercise, we’re just talking about it right now.

We Americans are in generally poor shape, and by Americans, I mean our culture as a whole.  And by that I mean the people you see when you go to work and to the mall and to the myriad other places you go in the course of your daily life… although you shouldn’t necessarily go to myriad places because I’m sure your mother told you about the kind of people you’ll find there and that you could go blind or your face could freeze that way or some such thing.

“Aha!” you’re thinking; “There’s the book of matches on which I had written the phone number of the guy who had the used nuclear reactor parts for sale.”

Okay, but please pay attention from now on.  The other person reading this is thinking: “What about those people on TV?  They’re not in poor shape.”  This is true, but those people are not Americans, they are actors who are playing Americans on TV.  Now this does not mean that some or all of them are not Americans but they do not generally represent the cross-section of the American public we are talking about.  You know, regular people.

Try this simple experiment.  Take a random sampling of television programs.  This means watch your favorite shows.  While doing so, count the people in the program and see how many of them are obviously out of shape.  Next go to a public place and count the same ratio at, say, the supermarket or Walmart.  And check the whole store, not just the candy aisles or the extra-large clothing section.  You’re likely to find that on television the ratio is maybe 2 out of shape people in 73, whereas in actual American culture the ratio will be as high as…a lot.

Why is this?  Have people throughout American history always been so out of shape?  Well, how should I know?  How old do you think I am?  Historical Americanologists, sociologists and scientists, in conjunction with other professional “ist” groups tell us that past generations of Americans were in generally better physical condition than we are today and would still be today had they not usually died at such young ages.  This is because previously the greatest majority of Americans had to dig and hammer and run and shuck, or in some form or other actually work.  They were required to engage in continuous movement that metabolized the foods they were eating, which in their case were rough breads, meats and eggs, with a generous dripping of lard – if they were well-off.  Of course, they dropped dead at an amazing rate simply because they didn’t wash their hands or couldn’t take two aspirin for a fever – but they died in generally better shape.

Today, however, a majority of us have traded the scythe and the hammer for the free election ballot so we can… wait, that’s a political ideological metaphor.  My point is that we have traded the hand tools and hard work, in most cases,for an office or a piece of automated equipment and shorter hours in the workplace.  To get to the workplace we normally drive and for recreation we watch someone else play a game.  We have come to a point where we have trouble metabolizing a diet soda, lettuce salad and fat-free dressing much less a third pound bacon cheeseburger with fries and a beer.

“Hey!”, you say, “I’ve seen really old portraits of out of shape people like the one hanging in the bank where they turned down my loan application to buy the used nuclear reactor parts!”

Sure, it’s true that the pictorial record of history, particularly in portraits, shows a large percentage of overweight people.  At that time in American history this was a sign of affluence.  Think about it… these were bank presidents and company founders and large business owners who would get up in the morning and sit in their offices all day, except for lunch.  They spent their recreational time coming up with games that others could play so they could watch without having to do anything.  They were also wealthy enough to have their portraits painted.  You can see that we have been building a society of pseudo-affluent people.  Today even the poorest of us can dine on bug-part-laden hot dogs and grease saturated chips while spending our increased recreational time watching some truly affluent people play a game on television.

How can we change this?

Well, education is the easiest way.  Education of people about proper modern diet.  Education about exersize and healthy lifestyle choices.  If it’s an effective program, this should help, oh, maybe 2 1/2% of the people in America today.  And half of those people are probably in okay shape to begin with.

What we need, then, is a plan to reach the largest part of the American public; a schematic which will benefit even those who do not wish to take part; an innovative and unique proposal from an innovative and unique mind…and, naturally, using the vast resources at my disposal I have developed a plan:

Aerobically Generated Televisions!

Think about it!  What does todays’ American culture have and revere more than any previous or foreign culture in the world?  No, not multi-level parking!  And not high priced sport shoes or frozen yogurt, either!

Television!  TV!  The boob tube…the idiot box…the zombie screen…the…well, you get the idea.  As a culture, we sit in front of the television more than anyone else in the world.  Our ancestors naturally didn’t spend all of this time sitting in front of the television because they only had a couple of channels so they could find out in 12 seconds that there was nothing on so they’d grab their swords and go out to fight the crusades or something.  This type of activity was exceptionally good exercise provided you could make it through the day with all of your parts still connected and operating within normal parameters.

So, if we’re going to be watching television anyway, we simply disconnect it from the wall outlet and design it to function only off an electrical generator wired to an exercise bike!  Oh, you could use other physically motivated equipment, as well.  TV by NordicTrac or Home Entertainment by Schwinn.  The point is, you want to watch, you’ve got to get the heart going.  Kinda’ does away with falling asleep in front of the TV, don’t it?

Sure, you say, people are going to watch less TV if they have to work at it.  Yes!  Perhaps they’ll go out and take part in a game themselves instead of watching one on television.  Maybe they’ll build a desk or possibly just clean the garage or talk to their neighbor.  Many people may actually even turn to reading!  Imagine that.

Yes, okay, it’s kind of extreme but it would benefit the people watching TV and would help those who weren’t simply by making them aware of other activities or even their children:

“Who are you?”

“I’m Mike, Dad.  I’m your son – I live here.”

“Oh, yeah.  You’re the kid who finds the remote control.  Go get me a

book, will ya’, Mike?”

Over all, it would be beneficial for nearly all people.  American families would be in better condition by watching TV as families since they’d be pedaling in shifts.  Those people who didn’t want to exercise would be staying in shape by becoming involved in some other activity, possibly one which involved exercise.  Others may become creative and make or build things.  The rest would likely take to reading, so while they sat about in an inactive state they would be gaining knowledge.

Everybody wins!

Besides, it would be easy to spot really smart individuals.

“Mr. Snassly, there’s a man out front looking for a pair of the wool blend dress slacks with a 46 inch waist and a 34 inch inseam.  What should I tell him?”

“Tell him we’ll be happy to help him with those…and ask him if he knows anything about stain resistant chemical impregnation of blended fabric fibers.”

My friend, Todd, and I were engaged in some work the other day.  Well, we thought of it as work…someone paid us to do it and we would much rather have been somewhere else, so regardless of the effort exerted, it can be considered work.  Some of the labor we engaged in involved dangerous work with heavy machinery at great heights.

Actually, I guess it wasn’t really machinery, but it did have moving parts (hinges) and it was heavy, from a relative point of view, when lifted by one person.  Also, the height we were working at was only 7 or 8 feet, but I once read an article containing statistics that proved a good probability of breaking your ankle by falling off of a pair of platform shoes (obviously, this study was done in the ‘70s, the decade which saw the creation of the science of “fashion forensics”).  Now, the extent of the danger of working at this height can be computed by determining the ratio of a fall off of the 4 inch shoe soles to a height of 8 feet.  If you are conservative and assume that a fall of four inches will break only one of the bones in the ankle, you can divide the 96 inches in 8 feet by that distance, you can see that a plummet from this pinnacle could break 24 bones.  This amount of injury could be fatal, and that’s not even considering the geometric cumulative effects of the force of gravity which increases at a rate of 32 feet per second, per second until the object stops or reaches “terminal velocity”.[1]  If you calculate those figures, you’ll see that a fall from 8 feet will cause you to reach the ground moving at somewhere under, er, 1800 miles an hour.

Anyway, as we were working, Todd slipped and momentarily teetered on the edge of destruction, a fated moment between life and death – or at least life and a 500 dollar medical deductible.  Fighting to regain his balance, he hung there for, oh, maybe 6 or 7 microseconds…long enough for me to think, “*!?”

Using razor sharp instincts, cool thinking and years of experience as a person who usually remains upright while walking, Todd shifted his gaze from left to right, capturing his footing by counterbalancing with the mere weight of his eyeballs.  A veritable disaster, as well as the remainder of the day off, was averted.

Because of my intense curiosity, my desire to relate these facts to you, the reader, and the fact that we were getting paid by the hour, I questioned him relentlessly about his thoughts and feelings in that instant.  Amazingly, Todd was relatively unaffected by his brush with death.

“Did your life pass before your eyes?”, I asked.  “Did any regrets creep into the corners of your mind?”

No, Todd told me, he didn’t really feel he was going to die so his life didn’t pass before his eyes.  He did feel he might be injured so he saw the last, oh, month and a half, but not his whole life.  The only regret he felt was a momentary reminder that he had allowed his medical insurance to lapse.

So much for my investigation into the near death experience.  I suppose I could ask around, but I don’t really know anyone who lives a life wrought with dangerous experiences.  Most of the people I know feel they run an extreme risk by stopping for a beer after work without calling home and telling their spouse.  In extreme cases this may be a hazardous endeavor, but for the most part it’s merely an act of consideration…meaning the person will consider how much grief she will receive from her spouse and his nagging about it and decide it’s worth the quarter it costs to call home.

I would think that everyone will, at one time or another, have an experience they personally feel is dangerous or life threatening.  These experiences are largely relative to each individual; that is, the danger they are exposed to is high in comparison to other things they have done, but not necessarily high compared to the activities of others.

For example, a person is surely partaking in a dangerous activity by smoking two packs of filterless Camels in, say, forty-eight minutes.  While you may see thing as a bit fuzzy for a time, the immediacy of the danger is somewhat less than that of a person who feels the obsession to inspect the hood ornament of high speed White Freightliners.  When a person is lying in a hospital in “serious”, “critical” or “severely damaged:  awaiting replacement parts on back order” condition, the argument as to the relative danger of the activity involved is largely done away with.  I suppose I could hang around the critical care unit and ask these people how they felt, but there’s a certain morbidity to that, not to mention severe boredom and possibly actual work.  Besides, I don’t like hospitals.

Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to draw on my own dangerous experiences, the worst of which could be relegated to near hangnail status.  When I was younger I did experience some moments which were high in danger, but during the activity I didn’t think much about it since I was really busy being involved in a dangerous situation.  My guess is, if you choose a time like this to start thinking about death, these situations become more dangerous because you’re obviously not paying attention to what you’re doing.

As I matured and became more responsible (read:  grew older) these types of things happened with much less frequency and severity.  Nowadays a severe occurrence has pretty much been downgraded to a near-injury experience.  This is largely due to the advent of safety features such a seat belts, personal floatation devices, bright, reflective clothing and Kevlar body armor.  The use of equipment of this nature greatly reduces the odds that a person will come to an untimely end while watching television at home.

[1] This is the maximum velocity an object can reach powered only by the force of gravity, although if you were approaching the ground at this speed the words “terminal velocity” would take on a whole new definition.

         Quite often when writing these little pieces of thinly connected thoughts I spend time contemplating in a booth or table at one of a number of local restaurants whose primary distinction is that they don’t throw me out after I have been sitting around drinking coffee for two hours.  In return, I try not to take up space during peak business times of the day such as lunch hour or coffee break time for city employees.  

          One of my favorite places is situated next to a beautiful park-like setting.  The view from the large windows helps to give me inspiration…if that’s what you can call whatever it is that causes me to write this kind of stuff.  The 25 cent coffee may also be a factor.

          Whatever it is, I have found I gain more than just a break from the walls at home or the inspiration from the park.  Many ideas for my informative essays veritably (collegiate word for “just about”) careen (poetic word for “bounce”) from the exterior ceiling supports and room separators (architectural term for “walls”).  It helps that the acoustical properties of the building make it possible to hear everyone in the place clearly except the person in the booth with you.  Of course, I am getting older and may be developing far-hearedness… a condition present when you can’t hear your daughter saying “Daddy…Daddy…Daddy…” right beside your chair but you complain to your wife that the neighbor three houses down shouldn’t mow his lawn during the play-offs.

          Anyway, the whole advantage of having these conversations as a source of ideas is in having a whole room full of researchers who read volumes of material.  During their interaction with each other I can pick from all of the collective information being passed back and forth.

          Now it’s true that the informants at this particular establishment don’t pass on much information from the Wall Street Journal of political points of view from the Washington Post.  These are, however, people I feel a part of and with whom I am comfortable.  In addition, I find I don’t have to stand in the long line at the grocery store just so I can read the Enquirer or the Weekly World News, since that information is often covered in-depth.

I also gain a great deal of insight into interpersonal relationships.  Just the other day I was told – well, actually I think the lady behind me was told that Cary and Gretal or Gretchen, or maybe even all three, were pregnant and were going to have a pheasant in four months and then they couldn’t go to high school to learn hunting because they wouldn’t allow them out of the nursing home.  It was quite busy that day, but I’ve got it all right here in my notes.

          As you listen it’s possible to pick up tid-bits of valuable folk wisdom, as well.  One day an older gentleman was teaching others how he could blow his nose to clear his hearing – whether he had a cold or not made no difference.  He felt this kept him from wearing a hearing aid.  I think he needed a handkerchief, though, ‘cause he said “What?” a lot.

          In addition I learned that Would you like more coffee, sir?  Excuse me.  I was distracted.  Anyway, I picked up some tips on denture care, soft water versus hard water, support hose and I also covered a conversation on lingerie and its strategic selection for purposeful effect.  I couldn’t bring myself to look but I really kind of hope these discussions didn’t all come from the same table, if you know what I mean.

          By far, the largest number of table-talks cover the topics of:

                     A)  Hunting and fishing

                     2) Vehicles

                     Next to last)  Family

IV)         The direction of society today

Of these subjects, the coverage of motorized vehicles is largely a male topic.  In my attentiveness I have gained many opinions on the superiority of Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Toyota, Isuzu, Bugati, Kenworth and Winnebago.  Points of discussion include engine comparisons, horsepower, fuel efficiency, fuel injection and fuel emissions.  Also torque…(What the heck is torque, anyway?  Have you ever seen the stuff?)  Women, on the other hand, usually only talk about vehicles when they don’t start.

          As a primarily male topic hunting and fishing are covered year-round.  I can often find out where the fish are biting, who will allow you to hunt their land, which loads work best in diverse conditions and who shot B. J. Arnells’ Hereford.  As you can imagine, all of this information is valuable in one way or another, if you know what to do with it.

          Contrary to what you may believe, women spend a lot of time talking about hunting and fishing as well.  Many begin their conversations with the topic, such as:

                     “Have you seen your husband lately?”

          or

“I told him if he was leaving at 4:30 in the morning, he could get up and make his own lunch!”

On occasion women will talk about hunting in a positive light – generally when they want their husbands to be out of the house.

          The next on the list, interpersonal and family discussions, are a co-ed topic, but the depth of the issue is much greater with women.  This is probably the source of the mistaken impression that men are shallow as the kiddy pool.  Men are not shallow.  They are uncaring.  There is a big difference and another ten pages there, which we will cover at another time.

          Anyway, the interpersonal and family topic, when in discussion, is usually confined to people related to the, um, discussioners…or people they know…or people other people they know, know.  And of course, people other people they know have heard of.  Got that?  These conversations make me worry about the direction of society today.

          Granted, these subjects are largely confined to men and women middle aged and older who are firmly entrenched in the lower middle-income socio-economic status.  I do, sometimes, hear teens converse naturally on their favorite topics.  These are usually the enterprising young girls who work as waitresses on the weekends.  When I do find it possible to figure out what it is they’re talking about, I find it has to do with the poor behavior of their classmates and, 79.2% of the time, boys they like…or don’t like…or someone else likes or doesn’t like.  Do you see a pattern here?  Anyway, this information doesn’t usually supply me with any literary ideas, but quite often I gather enough dirt on some local boy to get my lawn mowed for free.  It is, after all, a terrible tool to know that Bob likes Kellys’ sister, but doesn’t want the other guys to know.  Peer pressure can be a powerful thing.

          All in all, I could find a “fancier” place to have my coffee.  Maybe someplace I could hear quotes from Business Week and the McNeil/Lehrer Report or maybe listen in on a discussion on the effects of dimple placement on golfball distance or the longevity of the sex lives of certain members of the Kennedy family.  The idea, however, that someone needs to have conversations about these things is pretty funny in itself and obviously needs no further harassment from me.

          And do you know what a fancy place like that charges for a lousy cup of coffee?!

          Besides, they threw me out after only an hour and twenty minutes.

In my continuing efforts to inform the general reading public of new, interesting, exciting developments – or at least, things that I sometimes think of during moments of lucidity – I feel I should inform you of an interesting discovery I have made:

Men and women are different!

Oh, sure, I noticed some of the more obvious differences already.  Things such as the fact that women are required by some amendment to natural law to remove the hair from their legs in order to wear semi-transparent leggings, whereas if they didn’t remove the hair they would already have semi-transparent leg covering.  Or that men have difficulty in communicating unless using aggressive sporting terminology such as “shoot”, “take-down”, “tackle” or “slam-dunk”, and then they get all the leadership positions promoting peace.

The difference I noticed this time has to do with memory.  It seems that men and women remember things differently.  I’m not saying they can’t agree on the things they remember.  I believe there are documented instances of this actually happening, though I’ve never personally seen it.  And, at this point I would like to state that the fault for that is largely mine.  (That disclaimer should help shield me from any argumentative backlash.)

This should not be a surprise to persons who have been in a relationship…or been around people in a relationship…or read about..; well, you get it.  Anyone who has spent enough time with another person to move past the “whatever you say, dear” stage knows that men and women recall things differently.  As an example of this, let’s look back on a winter Sunday morning after a freezing rain.  My wife and I were standing on the church steps as an older widow lady was having trouble making it up the icy sidewalk.  Naturally, I moved to the bottom of the steps to help the woman to the handrail. After she reached the stabilizing fixture and had regained her balance I removed my steadying hold and turned away.  At this point she apparently slipped on a patch of ice and fell into a snowbank.  As she fell she bumped me and I, becoming deprived of the necessary traction to remain upright, was forced to cushion my fall in the snow rather than strike the ice-covered concrete.  These are the events exactly as they transpired.

My wife, however, remembers that I imprudently bounded down the steps to help a pretty young woman who was doing quite well on her own, thank you.  In her story, I landed on a patch of ice, slid across the sidewalk and careened off the girl, depositing both of us in the snow bank.  This is definitely not the true version of this particular occurrence.

Those of you who are inexperienced in matters of gender-selective memory are probably wondering why I am not upset by such a blatant misrepresentation.  To be honest, I was surprised that, in my wife’s version, I was given the benefit of slipping on the ice rather than falling due to my own clumsiness.  Besides, what she recalls did happen, it just happened on another occasion.

The real memory difference I am here to discuss is the process of memory – the variations in the way women and men tie together the memories they have.

Psychologically the process is generally similar.  People of all genders (meaning two) relate memories to other important events which occur in the same time period.  A person may hear a certain song and automatically recall a specific dance they went to or a special date they had.  This is quite normal, especially in the memories of adolescence or young adulthood.

Beyond these years, male and female memory structures diverge.  Both men and women will still recall an occurrence and place in a certain time period by associating it with an important personal event.  Women usually use deep, sentimental moments:  engagement, marriage and, mostly…children.

“That was in 1986,” she may say, “because we already had Bobby and Sarah.  I was still pregnant with Mikey, though, and he was born in July.  I recall the weather was nice, so it must have been June.”

As far as memory associations go, this is about as accurate as any if you don’t have an eidetic memory, in which case you’re probably too insufferable to be in a relationship with anyone, anyway.  Short of keeping a calendar or journal of such things as when Karen quit seeing Tom and started going out with Mark, that is.

Men would not remember when this type of incident occurred by associating the event with their children (actually, they may not remember it at all)…unless maybe one of his children threw up on Tom causing him to question family-life, commitment and his relationship with Karen and running off without looking back, thereby leaving Karen open to have a meaningful relationship with Mark.  And men probably wouldn’t even remember this unless it happened during a big game or maybe on Super Bowl Sunday.

To remember the time-frame of an event of substantial importance, a male will recall:

“We drove there in that ’81 Buick…we had that before the big Chrysler.  The carburetor was already starting to give me trouble so it must have been in the summer of ’86 sometime ‘cause the kids were out of school.  I remember ‘cause they were drivin’ me nuts.”

You may think, compared to the importance of the events used by women to associate memories, that this method is cold and heartless, lacking sentiment of any sort.  Nothing could be further from the truth…

I had a lot of warm feelings for that car.