Dara Torres

There’s lots of things I oughta be doing.

I oughta be flossing more.  Eating less.  Exercising more.  Sitting around less.  I oughta be putting on more sunscreen, driving slower, working harder, writing more, watching TV less.  If I had any brains at all I’d be reading better books, writing better fiction.  Getting my kids outside to play more, taking them to more fun things.  I should call my folks more, and my sisters, and my friends.  I should be making more money, wearing better clothes, cracking more jokes, thinking more, cleaning up after myself better.  I should pet my cats more often, donate more to charity, volunteer more.  I should be making more music.  Complimenting my wife more, taking her out more, holding her more. 

Yeah I should do all that stuff.  But I don’t and probably never will.  Probably there are lots of guys out there who do manage to do all that stuff; who look great, make a lot of money, and are tons of fun to be with.  But let’s face it: they’re all assholes, and I’d never want to be like them.   :-)

Of all the things I ought to be doing that I’m not, there are really only a handful of things I’d really like to be doing, if only I could muster the damned will.

One of them is sporting a set of six pack abs.

Oh yeah baby.

Now, I’m not a complete loser, and I’ve been doing a lot of push-ups this past year.  Sometimes I manage two or three a day.  I was at the beach this summer, and I was looking forward to it.  I thought, I’ve been doing a lot of push-ups and damned if I don’t look pretty good for my age; I have never been more ready for the dunes. 

Sadly, what I think I look like and the hideous reality of my actual bod are not quite the same thing.   So there I was at the beach and I take off my shirt and some damned fool snaps a picture.  These days of course with new-fangled digital camera jobbies you can see the results right away and I made the awful, ego-crushing mistake of looking at the picture. 

Let’s just say my transverse abdominal could use some work. 

Not a problem.  The heck with everything else.  Kids, wife and teeth can wait, but six pack abs?  Here we come!  Hey, if Dara Torres can do it, so can I (he wrote, conveniently ignoring the vast gulf between a human with actual strength of character and one without…) 

I bet she doesn’t floss.