Large Fierce Mammal

I have a lean, athletic body type. While it’s true I come of a family with members predisposed to such a build, I refuse to believe that the fact I grew up from earliest childhood building a foundation of musculature and cardiovascular fitness had nothing to do with the way I turned out. I hiked, biked, and rarely sat still unless I was reading or sleeping, which are two more ways of fueling the soul. Growing up in the days long before video games, I didn’t play heroic games sitting in front of a screen – I WAS a hero, wooden sword in hand, running through the woods in search of monsters to fight, princesses to rescue, and their hot mothers to thank me for it. Twenty-five years younger, Mrs. LFM had a similar experience in her formative years. The phenomenal expression of feminine pulchritude that is my Wife grew from a girl who never stopped adventuring, using her body the way Nature intended. At no point along the way did either of us ever consider that what we were doing was having an opposing effect on anyone else that would render them hopelessly fat beyond redemption.

All of this brings me to an item of great annoyance that has confronted me continually throughout my lean, fit, well exercised, and properly fed life – fat, plodding dullards who feel the need to excuse their physical state as compared to mine with some iteration of, “Well, you’re lucky. You have a fast metabolism.” It’s to them I dedicate this rather nasty poem.

You are a bloated, fattened thing,
No woman warms your bed.
You sit in one place and perform
Heroics in your head.

You see my body sleek and lean,
And diagnose the cause –
That every bit of fuel I eat
I burn up without pause.

Yes, of course, oh brilliant one!
THAT must be the reason.
Never mind the crap you eat,
Season after season.

Never mind your chosen path
That keeps you rooted still.
Never mind the heaving breath
Just LOOKING up a hill.

You just keep yourself convinced
You’re cursed while I am blessed.
Ignore the fact that, twixt us two,
You look better dressed.

Pretend you’re fat, and I am not
Because I burn fuel faster.
While you do that I’ll run and play,
And find fun things to master.

I’ll take the steps two at a time.
I’ll hunt and catch my prey!
I’ll seduce my Bride no less
Than sixteen times a day!

But all of this, my portly friend,
I give you without spite.
I serve it up instead to turn
Your eyes toward the light.

No superman am I, but yet,
Even if I were,
I am me because of me,
As you are you, good Sir.

Understand that, in the end,
Each one of us, alone,
Must forge the blade the Gods require,
And work it on the hone.