Recently my bride laughed at me when I told her I was every
bit the macho awesome athlete J.J. Watt is and I half meant it. You see, it’s not all hyperbole on my part,
as the older I get, the better I used to be, both for real and in my memory.
I can prove it too, starting right now. Like J.J. Watt, when I was a younger man,
say, to the age of about 50; I was devilishly handsome. Now, not so much, but still a contender
according to my friends on Facebook and Wikipedia – both plethora’s of hard
factoids.
Like Mr. Watt, I can and/or could lift heavy things. He weighs 292 pounds and I can still push
that much with my feet at the gym with the name sounding like a clock. He has a 55 inch vertical leap and I also
have an impressive leap, especially when goosed. Truth is, I haven’t been
goosed lately, but I assure you, its way up there, trust me.
J. J. worked as a pizza delivery boy and once again, I can
top that, as I worked INSIDE making pizzas.
I was a pizza making dude and he was the doo-dah pizza delivery boy. Sometimes I even impress myself with my
accomplishments.
The stellar Texan played tight-end at Central
Michigan with only eight catches for the year. Well in 1963, while living in Dundee,
Michigan, as a 6th grader, I
won the coveted Fords Punt, Pass, & Kick contest beating every classmate
above me and took home the varsity jacket, much to their dismay. We moved to California and I never played football, but
All-Star baseball as a shortstop.
J.J. gave up his scholarship to CMU and I never bothered to
get one, so we are pretty much even there also.
The giant defensive player has a younger brother named T.J. and so do
I. His younger brother plays football
and mine lives it vicariously. Even
Steven again! Wait, there’s more. The similarities are frankly – amazing.
Mr. Watt is extremely charitable and so am I. I repaired and gave away over 40 computers to
the homeless (most of them are divorced men whose wives have taken them to the
cleaners). He likes HEB and so do
I. He likes to crush things with his
hands – I like to break bricks with mine.
He salutes like crazy and I did that too in the Air Force!
His favorite sport is hockey and I love to yell that word
out when listening to the Democratic party promises or people defending their
policies! Again! It just keeps getting real here.
Last week the monster Texan set a record for 20 sacks per
season for two consecutive seasons. I
yawned when I heard that to tell you the truth.
My first year as a bagger in a grocery store in Georgia, I
sacked close to 5000 customers in one season alone. I was working for $5 a day and pennies for
tips. I didn’t bother to count the second year how many I sacked.
The humongous defensive lineman loves to rush out of a hole
with smoke coming out all around him.
Who doesn’t? I went through the
smokehouse and fought fires at Texas A&M fire field more times than I can
remember in my glorious years at the work-20 and often with a great amount of
fanfare from my fellow firefighters.
Been there, done that.
And the real kicker to all this is, that he only has
something like 9% body fat. 9%! Geeze Louise, I got that one beat by a long
margin. I’m like 14% or so. So, my beautiful bride is now set straight,
as she should be. She got herself a
ringer in me about 37 years ago and maybe now, when she reads this, she’ll
finally see I am everything the big man is and more.
