Battle of the Bulge

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Spring is in the air! …Oh, wait. No, it just kind of feels that way because it is above freezing for the first time in a week.

But it is almost February, and that’s great, because spring really is just around the corder. And that means the return of green grass, flowers, baseball, Daylight Saving’s Time (are we still doing that?), cook-outs, shorts and tanm-tops, and all of the other wonderful trappings of warmer weather.

The only problem with it is that winter is (hopefully) fading, and with it my last excuse for still holding onto my traditional “winter weight.” It happens every year without fail (well, every year since my late 20’s anyway). Thanks to the Holiday Season and then a general disdain for cold weather that keeps me indoors and not being very active, I accumulate a number of extra pounds over the winter. And despite my insistence to my

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wife that there’s just “more of me to love.” the older I get I’m finding it harder to shed those extra pounds once the nice weather does arrive.

And it really has been just lousy weather — first frozen, then wet, then frigid — so, really, I should get some slack.

Speaking of slack, there’s not much in the waistband of my pants these days. I’ve been holding steady in the 34 range for a number of years. There have been times where, if pressed to do so, I could have squeezed into a 33, but there have also been times that I’m wondering if they make a 35.

I am very hesitant to jump to a 36, mostly because 36 inches is a yard, and I simply refuse to accept the idea that I am a yard around. Plus, I’m too cheap to go out and buy all new pants.

Surely, I tell myself, when it’s warm outside again, I’ll drop the excess poundage.

Of course it wasn’t always like this. I was a svelte 28 inches in the waist when I got married. Yes, that was 32 years and 70 pounds ago, but I still have a pair of those pants (all cut up and decorated with the names of 80s hair metal bands, of course) to remind me. They’re 28-32s.

These days I’m a 34-30. No, silly, I haven’t shrunk two inches. Obviously, those two extra inches were so I could “tight roll” my jeans (if you know, you know). Kids, ask your parents about it… on second thought, don’t.

But over the course of those two decades, I have expanded operations if you will. Some of it’s pregnancy weight.

Laugh all you want, I’m fully convinced that sympathy weight is a real thing. I was kind of skinny, so graduating to a 30 was actually kind of cool. But, alas, once that ball started rolling, it never really stopped. So, here I sit in my 34’s, edging dangerously close to 200 pounds. Maybe not so bad if I’m the starting center for the high school football team — I’m not the starting center for the high school football team.

My wife shed several pants sizes a couple of years ago by running. It began with a program a lot of folks at my church do called “Couch to 5K,” which is exactly what it sounds like. You start out running a little a few times a week and eventually build up to being able to run a 5K.

Eventually, she ran a few halfmarathon, as in 13.1 miles. I can barely do a half-marathon of my favorite show on Netflix.

One year, feeling a little too pudgy, even for winter weight, I thought I might join her in her endeavors. Then I actually tried running. I made it halfway around the block before my chest started pounding and my shins started barking, and get this, my left foot fell asleep — while I was running. I must have looked pretty rough, because some members of the Marion Fire Departent were out testing their hoses and they actually stopped to ask me if I was OK. Luckily, I was too tired to give them the finger…

I did manage to limp along for the whole mile, but that was the end of my running experiment.

So, for real, though… does Levi’s make 35’s?