What you don't want to do when you're picking up some wine at the store is go for the jumbo bottle where there are like three bottles worth in one.  It seems to make a lot of sense: easier to carry than three bottles, a better price than three bottles.  The down side is you end up knocking down loads of it, and it barely looks like you made a dent.  So, with so much to spare, you gladly pour yourself another until you're where I'm at - too buzzed up to want to leave the house, which is actually good from a saving money standpoint.

I figured since I'm pleasantly buzzed with nowhere to go or a willingness to go there, this would be a good time to tell you all a story.

I was working out to the Insanity DVD, mummy-kicking and sweating buckets, when a morbidly obese Latino kid who looked to be around 11-years-old struck up a conversation with me.  "Is that how you got skinny?" he asked.  I told him not specifically, but that I do like people telling me what to do or I get lazy.  Undeterred by the fact that I was looking straight at the screen (never directly at him) and doing flipping burpies, or whatever, he then asked if I could tell him what exercises to do.  He tried to do what I was doing, but I got the feeling that he was self-conscious about the way his body looked when jumping up and down, which I get.  He looks like a young man who never works out, so there was no need to force him out of his comfort zone when getting any kind of work out of him is probably a success.

So when I would get breaks in the action on the DVD, I would hurry up and give him things to do, like riding the eliptical for a mile or so, and doing a set of curls, bench press, and push-downs.  I gave him realistic reps to shoot for, enough to challenge him, but not so much where he was going to either puke or get so incredibly sore he would never come back.  After a few cycles of those activities, he seemed quite pleased with himself, and he was pushing himself surprisingly hard.

He wanted to switch discs on my workout to play the dancing game on the xbox, but I told him that as long as he stayed active for the remaining 37 minutes of the TV workout, I would set it up and dance away with him.  And he actually did steadily work out for the duration.  At one point he smiled and pointed out how much he was sweating.  Then our sweaty asses did "Promiscuous" on the dance game together.  It was funny because in the top corner it shows your own body above the dancer to show where you are in relation to the sensor, and his body was absolutely huge.  However, that didn't matter because this young man was putting me to shame, racking up perfect scores on the majority of his moves while I was thrilled with a "good" of my own.



He was ready to work out again tomorrow, but I told him I have to fly out to L.A. right after work and Monday was no good, but I could meet him at the same time and place on Tuesday.

This whole episode could be my repents for my negative feelings I have had for overweight people over the years (like the previous post, for instance).  Here is a kid who may have the odds stacked against him: maybe a poor home life, nothing but junk food ever in the house, childhood depression, being the victim of constant teasing.  And here he is looking to push himself to "get skinny," taking the initiative to ask for help.

Well, I hope I can help this fella, and not to make myself feel less guilty or like a decent person, but because he seems like a really sweet kid who seems to already feel a little better about himself.