Hercules, Eat Your Heart Out

The Old Man has never had much of a "bod". "Hunk" in my vocabulary generally meant a serving of cheese. Matter of fact, as I grew and developed, I seemed to go from looking much like a hockey stick with a nose to a football with legs. I don't recall much of an in-between. Like most young boys, I fancied myself potential superhero material. A quick glance in the mirror, however, drove home the message, "We've got some work to do here, bud".

All of us in the Park Street Battalion were avid comic book connoisseurs. Our much traded reading library ran the gamut from Westerns through Crime making stops along the way at Mickey, Donald and friends and Archie and the gang. Running through all of these genres was one commonality; they all had space allocated to selling something. From X-ray glasses to a ventriloquist's 'secret' device, the back panel of the comics were loaded with those "must haves" that drilled directly into a boy's brain. Who wouldn't want X-ray glasses? After all, there were some rumblings going on deep inside that we had not yet felt, but if we could have, we could not yet identify or understand. We just knew we needed those glasses.

Far and away the one that captured my attention most often was the little cartoon story from the Charles Atlas folks. There was usually some hapless chap on the beach with his girl friend. A bully would come by and kick sand in the poor fellow's face and when confronted, the dirty scoundrel would punch his lights out. The story went on to show how the Atlas course would result in a brand new man who went back to the beach and took his just revenge. The locale and scenario might change but the story and the ending never did.

I never ordered the course. There wasn't extra money around for such things in our house, so I never even brought it up. I attempted to understand how the exercises worked and gave it a pretty half-hearted attempt to mimic them, but without success. Here are 'Before and After' photos of my efforts.

By the way, even though Charles Atlas died in the early 1970's, the company he founded still exists. Give them a look if you're so inclined.

I went on to learn about things like metabolism and genetics....about reps and resistance. And somehow they all managed to conspire against me in later quests to become the chiseled superhero figure I just knew was my destiny. And then, I thankfully came to acceptance. Like Popeye, "I yam what I yam". Now when I refer to my "six-pack", check the refrigerator. That's where you'll find it.