I Win Again??

My brother and I have been competing blindly and without mercy since we were old enough to shoot a marble. He is thirteen months my senior. I am naturally stronger and have bigger bones.

All the years growing up, size was a competition, as well.

"How much you weigh?"

"125!"

"Izzat all? I weigh 128!"

And so it went.

The opposite is now the case, now that we are both approaching 50 (he'll get there first!)

"How much you weigh?"

"260."

"THAT MUCH? Why... I only weigh 238! Dude, do THEY MAKE clothes your size?"

"Hey, shut up!"

"Dude, I'm just sayin'.... that's an awful lot of material. I suppose you could just put a tent around yourself and call it a goretex toga..."

And so it will always go.

As evidence of the seriousness of our rivalry, my brother spent the night in the hospital last week "for observation".

After a long work-out, he felt dizzy and his heart started doing funny things. He thought he was having the dreaded heart attack (visions of all those beautiful, hand-crafted burgers, no doubt, coursing through his mind) and was driven immediately to the ER.

It turns out, after receiving an email from me in which "238" is plainly visible between my toes on my scale, Steve went into hyper workout, low calorie intake mode and got himself all low on Potassium and Magnesium- you know, ELECTROLYTES.

The doctors gave him a stress test in the morning which he passed by being unable to generate a high enough heart rate on the treadmill for the test to be a test.

"You're healthy, mister, but drink some Gatorade, dude," the doctor said.