Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

for ten seconds. It’s sort of an extended “oy gevalt,” which is appropriate, because that’s the way I felt when I found out I’d have to be doing another set of exercises (hands, legs, neck—I’m over an hour a day).

• When sitting at the desk, keep your butt as far back in the chair as possible. A good reminder for both Julie and me, who sit like flour sacks.

• When lifting an object from the ground, bend the knees and keep the back straight, then push with the legs. This technique I knew about. But had I done it? Not really. It’s a revelation, an immediate relief from pain. I now avoid rounding my back in any situation. If I have to talk to Lucas about an important Yo Gabba Gabba! plot point, I squat down next to him, then I bounce back up. It cuts the usual I’m-an-old-achy-man feeling in half.

Squatting Revisited

I’ve become quite the squatting enthusiast, it seems. Which would make FitzGordon happy. He, and a surprising number of other people, believe we should all be squatting at bus stops and while eating dinner, as did many Asians of previous generations. There aren’t many studies on it, but I’ll bet it’s better than sitting. Almost anything is better than sitting.

The first time I tried squatting for a few minutes, I was in pain. I told Julie it felt like my legs had menstrual cramps. She found the description odd.

Turns out, I was doing it wrong. To do the proper “Asian squat,” you have to keep your feet flat, your legs spread wide, and your arms forward for balance.

I tried it at a bus stop after taking Jasper to school.

“There’s room,” said a man in a Yankees jacket, sliding down the bench to make more space.

“No thanks. I prefer squatting.”

He nodded stoically.

After a month of walking tall and squatting low, my back does feel better. The pain has receded to the occasional twinge. I still sometimes walk like a monkey, but mostly to scare the kids.

Checkup: Month 24

     Weight: 159

     Dogs petted: 12

     Minutes singing per day (possible stress reliever): 10

     Days practiced didgeridoo: 2

     Frog calls memorized to keep brain sharp: 9

This month was the triathlon. Here’s how it happened: My alarm chirps at 3:30 a.m. on a Sunday. My stomach feels leaden, since I’d carbo-loaded the night before. According to my research, prerace carbo-loading has iffy scientific support. I didn’t care. I’ve been fantasizing for weeks about devouring a huge plate of fettuccine Alfredo, and I wasn’t about to let snooty science get in my way.

I take a subway downtown to the ferry terminal. Tony is waiting for me, and we wheel our bikes up a ramp and onto the 5:30 a.m. boat to Staten Island. There are two types of passengers on that boat. It isn’t overly difficult to tell them apart. There are those with lightweight bikes, aerodynamic helmets, and water bottles. And there are those with leopard-skin skirts and primary-color hair and thick mascara, teens returning from a hard night of partying in Manhattan.

“I’ve just got one question,” Tony says as we sit down in the ferry’s main cabin.

“What is it?”

“Why?” says Tony. “Why do people do this to themselves?”

“You mean . . .”

“Why do they punish themselves by doing triathlons?”

I’m not sure what to say.

Tony and I are seated across from a thirtysomething man leaning on his Cannondale bike. He has a thin red beard and thick quads.

“That’s quite a bag,” he says, nodding at my duffel.

“Thanks,” I say.

I believe I’m getting my first triathlon trash talking. Admittedly, the duffel—which was the only one I could find in our apartment—wouldn’t have been my first choice. It is camouflage, but for reasons unclear to me, the camouflage isn’t the traditional green. It is made up of bright pink and red splotches. Which I suppose would be helpful if you’re doing a commando raid on a nine-year-old girl’s bedroom but isn’t so helpful when you’re trying to look like a triathlete.

“It’s big, too,” says the bearded guy. “You got another body in there in case yours gets tired out?”

Tony turns to me. “I’m not sure I like this guy’s attitude.”

Tony, the former parole officer, could lay this bozo flat with one pop to the mouth. But I tell Tony we have to save our energy for the race.

After disembarking, we know we’ve arrived at the right place. Speakers blare Bruce Springsteen’s anthem to exercise, “Born to Run.” The field is covered with hundreds of bikes propped up on long steel racks. Helmets, towels, packets of blackberry energy gel are scattered everywhere. I hook my bike onto the bar next to a twentyish blond woman zipping up her wet suit.

“Have you done this triathlon before?” I ask.

She nods.

“How’s the water temperature?”

“Oh, you’ll panic. You’ll hyperventilate.”

A few minutes later, on the line to the bathroom, I ask another veteran racer, a man with orange goggles perched on his head. “Oh, you’ll panic. You’ll hyperventilate.”

We line up on the beach nearby, and at the whistle we wade into the dark Raritan Bay.

The icy water slides down the back of my wet suit and up my sleeve. It’s unpleasant, like swimming in a Slushie. But . . . here’s the strange thing. I don’t panic and I don’t hyperventilate. It’s not that I’m particularly manly, despite my now-average testosterone. It’s just that I had built up the ice swim so much in my mind, the sixty-degree reality seemed manageable.

Maybe my calming techniques help: I do my stomach breathing. I lie on my back. I curse, since I know that this scientifically cuts down on the pain. I try some Buddhist distancing: “Now, this is an interesting sensation on my skin!”

I splash along in the choppy water, popping my head up every thirty seconds to get oriented. Eleven minutes later, I curve around a spherical orange buoy and head to the beach. All that angst for eleven minutes.

I run dripping to my little plot of land to strip off my wet suit.