Ftt Off-Topic: The Moment Of Perfection

I'm at the gym. Saturday afternoon, after stopping at the bank. I go ten times a month or more, because that's just the way my OCD mind works, with Defined Goals and Set Expectations and all that. When I was young and in Sunday School, I remember a teacher telling me once that if I pretended to be good long enough, even God would be fooled. Well, the same goes for disciplined, really. And when your HMO pays you more than the cost of the membership, so that you are actually squeezing out a couple of tanks of gas for getting in shape, that makes it easier. As noted workout enthusiast Woody Allen says, 90 percent of life is just showing up.

Anyway, after a year of this, I'm up to 2 miles on the treadmill and 100 pounds on the flies, which is to say, more fit than I've been since moving back from California in 2006. Since I weigh myself every day, have a digestion issue that makes eating at night problematic at best, and am not so secretly cheap (click on some ads here today, OK?), I haven't had to size up my clothes since college. And it also means that I am more likely than not to experience the following perfect moment...

Which is when you jump on a machine that some other guy - some larger guy, some taller guy, some younger guy - and realize that you are doing more weight than he is.

I'm 41, shorter than Muggsy Bogues. I wear glasses and goggles, have the vertical leap of a dead man and a jump shot you could hang clothes on. My last fight was in eighth grade, when the other kid pushed all the wind out of my stomach and "won", but I sent him to the hospital by grabbing his little finger as he punched me and yanking it for all I was worth. In crowds, I am rat-like and invisible; I routinely wedge myself into subway cars that are past tolerance and generally get along.

And in that single perfect moment where I up Young Gun's weight?

I'm stronger, younger and taller than I've ever been.

And tomorrow, I'll be more.