The Spit

Ironman - It's all in how you exercise

By Tracy Farr
Editor, The Daily Spittoon

"I just love it when old friends come into the Saloon," Bud Henderson said to me the other day while I was eating a bowl of homemade banana pudding and drinking a strong cup of coffee.

"Several weeks ago, while I was cooking up a mess of chicken-fried steak, Axel G. Reese Jr. came in and sat down at a stool. Axel was a guy I went to high school with and I hadn't seen him in ages."

Bud told me that while he was serving his friend Axel a cup of Cowboy coffee, they talked about the good old days, their wives, their jobs, and everything else good buddies talk about when they hadn’t seen each other in awhile.

"And then he told me something that just about knocked my coffee cup out of my hand," Bud told me.  "He said he was training to enter the local Iron Man Competition."

So I asked what was so astonishing about that?

“That takes a lot of training,” Bud said, “and Axel doesn't believe in exercise.”

Bud explained that while they were going to school, Axel’s philosophy on exercise was that God only gave you so many heartbeats, and the more you exert yourself, the faster you use up your quota.

“You're not going to believe what he told me next," Bud said.  "Axel said that he had developed a sure-fire way to stay fit and trim without stepping one foot in a gym or on a track.  He does all his exercising at the grocery store.”

I took another gulp of coffee and waited for what was to come.

"Axel and his wife wait to do their shopping when the store is the busiest," Bud told me. "His wife gets in the longest check-out line she can find and Axel, with shopping list in hand, sprints through the aisles picking up the things they need and puts them in the cart.  By the time his wife gets to the register, their cart is full and Axel's had his strenuous workout.”

I didn't mean to laugh in his face, but I just couldn’t help it.

“I know it sounds funny, and I laughed too,” Bud said, “but Axel said when the Iron Man Competition is over, that he'll be the one with the trophy.”

I asked when the competition was because I just HAD to witness this.

"The Iron Man Competition was last week but Axel never showed up to compete," Bud said. "Three days later I found out why."

According to Bud, his friend Axel had an accident during one of his grocery store runs. He was zigzagging his way around some shopping carts, looking for a box of pasta, when he tripped on a can of Campbell's Home Cookin' Ready to Serve Country Vegetable Soup that was lying on the floor.  The next thing you know, a doctor was telling him that his leg was broken.

“In the end, it was probably a good thing that Axel couldn't make it to the Iron Man Competition,” Bud said.  “I don't think he would have wanted to astonish his competitors with his unbelievable state of fitness.”

Like a good friend, I told him that I couldn't agree with him more.