MY BODY
★★★★★ (4 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing my body.
At my age things have been going downhill for a while; running up the stairs almost always ensures such an event be followed by a nap; women seem to look away when I remove my shirt; and most everything sags. But the trick is in finding ways to take advantage of the changes offered with age. In doing so, my body has achieved more than I could have hoped.
Whereas my previously lean body was taught and intimidating, the softness of its current state allows for great amounts of pity – especially from strangers. At the market I’ll drop something and pretend I can’t pick it up just to watch others do the work for me. It’s an amazing sensation of power. Shoplifting is easier now, too. No one suspects the kindly old man. On the rare occasions when I get caught, I just act feeble and claim I don’t know how that iPod got under my hat. Then I pee myself a little and security is quick to let me go. (And when the bus driver sees my wet pants, he doesn’t even ask me to pay the fare!) Never before have I been so free.
My ears aren’t as powerful as they could be, so I sometimes require a hearing aid. If I turn up the volume enough, I can hear conversations not meant for me. Just last week I heard my butcher talking about an affair he was having with his wife’s gynecologist. Now guess who’s being anonymously blackmailed. It’s basically like having a coupon for all the free steak I want.
Some of my body’s best traits have nothing to do with age. For instance, I have really extraordinary nipples. I was a nipple model in my youth (I was Burt Lancaster’s body double in A Child Is Waiting) but gave it all up when I went into insurance. There’s no reason I couldn’t go back to modeling though. My nipples are still just as beautiful today as they were back then.
The absolute best thing about my body is its resilience. Aside from the countless surgeries its undergone (double bypass, rhinoplasty, polydactyly removal), it’s also survived a number of accidents, wild animal attacks and a fist fight with Joey Finnegan, this jerk who thinks everything is about him. And once I was in a coma for 18 months, and when I came to I could speak Spanish. ¡Gracias, cerebro!
If my body hadn’t contracted STDs so easily, that would have made the difference between four and five stars. Not that my body didn’t do an awesome job of fending off the diseases, but having to explain their origins to my wife did cause some problems. May she rest in peace. If you think your body is better than mine, please send some photos of the things it can do to: [email protected].
Please check back next week when I’ll be reviewing meteors.
