Friday, April 30, 2004

The 1000-Pound Club

By RICK RYCKELEY
Contributing Writer

We flawless parents can easily find fault in our offspring. If you have been a regular reader for the last two and a half years, it is obvious that I’m better than most folks at this. Not a day goes by that The Boy doesn’t do something that irritates me. I think he’s now taking pride in doing so.

When The Boy does something wrong, it’s glaring, and I’m quick to criticize him AND write about it in the newspaper. He’s been the source of some of my best articles; I don’t know what I’m going to write about when he goes to college. But when he does something good, which I must admit is becoming more frequent, I’m just as quick to praise him and write about it in the paper.

Last week The Boy lifted 1000 pounds in the weight room using three lifts: the squat, power clean, and bench. By doing so he was inducted into an elite group called the 1000-pound club. Up to then, only four other members in the last five years had achieved this. All were seniors. The Boy is the first junior.

He came home, showed me his white T-shirt with 1000-POUND CLUB emblazoned across the chest, and said he worked the last three years in the weight room to finally accomplish it. I told him if I had known he wanted one so badly, I could have saved him a lot of time and a whole lot of sweat simply by going out and having one made up for him. He was not amused.

That night The Boy asked if he could get his new shirt washed; he wanted to wear it to school the next day. “Son, I’ll be happy to wash your new white 1000-POUND CLUB shirt.” I joked. “I think there’s a red sweater that needs to be washed also.”

Remembering a similar incident with his underwear last year, he quickly replied, “Daaad, I don’t want a pink shirt! I’ll wash it myself.”

Well, at least I figured out a way for him to do his own laundry.

One thousand pounds. Now that’s a whole lot of weight to lift if you’re a kid. Some of us adults lift that much in an average day. The next morning when the alarm went off, I lifted 220 pounds just to get up and out of bed, but that was just the start of my quest towards the elite 1000-POUND CLUB.

Through the course of the day, I drank five bottles of water (2 pounds each), had a barbecue sandwich, a large glass of sweet tea, two donuts and a Snickers candy bar. That’s gotta be at least worth at least 10 extra pounds. I also bought a new patio table and six chairs and lifted them into my truck (150 pounds) and lifted again to get them into the back yard (another 150 pounds). It wasn’t even one o’clock, and I had already lifted 540 lbs.! More than halfway to my goal; this was going to be easy.

Lifting all the tools to put together the patio set meant another 10 pounds. When The Wife got out of school, we went to get her moca chocka latta thingy, and she bought coffee, a 5-pound can. I carried it to the car. Then we went grocery shopping and bought at least 80 pounds of food. Lifting all those bags in and out of the car added another 160 pounds to my total. Now I’m up to 715 lbs. Six o’clock, time to start cooking dinner.

By the time I cooked dinner, took out the trash and fed the dog, I figured it was another 20 pounds of stuff lifted. After dinner I backed the truck up to the tool shed and cleaned it out. The Wife came out two hours later and said I was throwing away a ton of stuff. A ton of stuff - that’s 2,000 pounds Ð it was nine o’clock, and my total was 2,735!

After my strenuous day I stretched back in the recliner and fell asleep. The Wife shook me an hour later and told me to get up so I could go to bed. Lifting my 220 lbs. out of the recliner, I walked sleepily down the hallway knowing that I too lifted over 1000 lbs. in one day. Wonder if The Wife’s gonna buy me a T-shirt; hopefully not a pink one.

[Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.]