Jiggly Junior?

Once upon a time, the wife and I were actually pretty decent high school atheletes. I was no by no means the Big Man On Campus and the wife wasn't planning on a career rooted heavily in corn rows and a general lack of repsect (WNBA), but we both owned letterman's jackets and are pretty proficient in nearly every sport. In the years since our days as student atheletes we have kept ourselves active by pursuing the always elusive Recreation League Champions T-Shirts. These crappy oversized cotton shirts are enough to keep you paying $50 every 4 months to be frustrated, injured, and stressed out once a week. Luckily, all those years of wasting our summers and weekends in far off places, being yelled at by mustachioed coaches finally paid off in the form of neutral colored victory clothes. It may hurt everytime I try to bend down and tie my shoes, but at least we still got it...at least enough of it to beat other desk jockeys at recreation sports.

Because of our active lifestyles and athletic endeavors, many of our friends are convinced that the wife will soon give birth to some sort of hyper-athletic robo-baby. I would love it if the boy wants to spend all his free time playing and watching sports with pops, but I also must face the very real possibility that my child might not have any interest in sports at all. Even more ironic, what if we end up with a pudgey little bugger? It's not likely, but I still have to wonder how I would react to such a situation (besides the obligatory "We're still not sure who the father is" jokes). I honestly don't care whether the boy is fit as fiddle or has to wear husky size Huggies, as long as he is healthy and happy I will love him just the same...I will just have way more comic ammunition if he's happily plump.

One thing I will definitely not do is force the boy to be something he is not, as many of my friends had to suffer through some very uncomfortable childhoods in order to try and meet family expectations. One of my best friends had a sadly hilarious incident when his uncle tried to intervene in his video game-based sedentary lifestyle. Out of respect for my buddy, and for insurance reasons I won't divulge his real name, so let's just refer to him as "Pameron" in order to protect his identity. Apparently one of Pameron's uncles did not feel that assiting Lara Croft raid tombs did not qualify as "exercise". It seems that he felt the only way to nudge Pameron down a more cardio-friendly path was to drag him to a local park and make him run laps around the park...in a wetsuit. Take a moment and marinate in that delightful imagery. An already lumpy young boy showing up to the park and being forced by his "caring" uncle to perform calisthenics, all while wearing a thick layer of neoprene. Either the man is was a terribly insenstive relative or just had the greatest sense of humor in human history. Either way, I can't wait to see what shape my little bundle of joy arrives in.