Sunday, October 09, 2005

Weight lifting

When I was 17 and near one of the peaks of my physical prowess, I was trying to get Al started in weight lifting as a part of encouraging and helping prepare him for the higher level of highschool football (living my life vicariously you know). We were messing around with his little 110# barbell set in the basement, as I was giving him pointers on how to military lift this gargantuan(not really)tonnage, our dad comes down stairs and looks at us, asks us what we were doing, to our answer and with a twinkly, cat whisker smirk, proceeds to military lift this(with ease) one handed, and then to my shock, jerks it to the ceiling one handed.

I never gave Alan much advice on weight lifting after that. In fact I don't remember doing anything else that night except going to my room.

I looked upon my dad with a new found respect. In fact began to examine his physique a little more closely and compare it to mine. He had Popeye arms with about 20 inch biceps and forearms about as big. His wrists were as thick as my forearms and frankly from previous experience with his reflexes knew that he was world class.

It gets even more scary from there. His IQ was measured at 165. There was no outsmarting the man. He always did seem to pop up at the most inopportune times.