Sweating Bullets

Today we were at the North Sydney markets loading up on all sorts of good food when I looked down to see my t-shirt was covered with big blotches of perspiration.

If genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, call me Einstein. I don't even need to be moving to break into a sweat when it's the least bit humid. In fact, my body kind of works on a 30-second delay. While I will sweat up a little bit while walking or exercising, it's after I'm done and just sitting still that I start to look like Albert Brooks in that great flop sweat scene in Broadcast News. The term sweatshirt is meaningless because every shirt I own is likely to earn that title sooner or later.

So today when I looked down I realized I had few options. Since we were at the markets, I briefly thought I might try to convince someone that the sweat patterns looked a lot like the Virgin Mary and sell them my shirt for a couple of hundred dollars. The problem with that idea is that A) the patterns didn't really look like anything and B) I doubt that there is anyone in North Sydney who is religious enough to hand over their Visa to buy a sweaty miracle. Oh yes, and C) selling them my shirt meant I would be without one - and that would not be a good thing for the people trying to sell food there.

And to turn the Einstein quote on its head, today it was perspiration that caused inspiration as a line from the old Andy Griffith Show from the 60's popped into my mind. It was a line delivered by Goober Pyle that must have struck me silly as a teenager because I still remember it - or at least I did today. Trying to say something nice to a chubby girl, Goober had come up with, "For a fat girl, you don't sweat much."

And that got me thinking of all those other great comics of my youth.

Phyllis Diller - "She's so fat that when she sits around the house, she sits around the house."

Rodney Dangerfield - "I had a girlfriend that was so fat her belly button made an echo."

Henny Youngman - "My doctor said I was fat. I told him I wanted a second opinion."

And later, the very large Louie Anderson - "My first words were, 'Seconds, please'."

Well, you get the idea. Of course nowadays it's not politically correct for comedians to make fun of people who are overweight. There was a real brouhaha recently when Ricky Gervais (who acknowledges he is overweight himself) criticized people who have surgery to reduce their waistlines. When he was attacked for being insensitive to overweight people, his reply is screamingly funny. It's outrageous and very funny, but way too raunchy for many, so find it on google at your own risk. (And Mom and Dad and Peg, don't even try.)

But Gervais is undoubtedly the exception. In day-to-day life no one ever points out that I am a XXL sort of guy (no one, that is, except for that damned trainer cartoon on Wii Fit). Yet we all learn to substitute other words to make the same point. At the markets today several people looked at me and I am quite sure I overheard them saying to their friends, "Look at him. Isn't he one of the sweatiest men you've ever seen?"