The FYC

In the comment section of yesterday’s post, king of the back handed compliment Pat Imig noted: “Fritz, you look lean and not fat.”

Thanks. Dick.

Thinking about it a little bit, I realized that, yes, not only was that photo taken four years (which seems kind of weird to me now), but also about 25 pounds ago. I thought “Have I really gained 25 pounds in four years? That’s some kind of awesome.” Then, I realized that I actually dropped down to 155 while I was in Kuwait, so technically, I have gained 35 pounds in four years. And that’s fucking incredible.

Of course, these numbers are rather skewed and my weight gaining abilities are not really that magnificent. Four years and one month ago, as I left North Carolina to live in the desert for six months, I weighed in at a healthy 180 (I consider somewhere between 175 and 185 to be my ideal weight; I’m 190 right now). I actually didn’t lose any weight over that month long boat ride across the Atlantic, as it was the first time in my adult life that I have actually eaten three whole, square-ish meals a day, and the only activities I participated in were sleeping, playing spades, and jacking it. A lot. In fact, I won a contest.

(Seriously, if I told you how many times, you wouldn’t believe me.)

So, nearly four years ago (almost to the day), I arrived in Kuwait exactly ten pounds lighter than I am now. But then a funny thing happened:

They have, in Southwest Asia, these things known as “sandstorms.” And they fucking suck. In essence, it’s like being in a torrential downpour with 25 mph winds, except instead of water coming down all around you, its sand. Fucking sand. The air gets thicker than you can believe; it’s nearly impossible to breath, you can’t see anything more than five feet in front of you, and after a while it starts to fucking hurt, like some weird ancient torture.

Inside of our camp, which was essentially an area of the desert covering a few square miles which housed a collection of hastily assembled yet meticulously aligned tents surrounded on it’s perimeter by eight foot high sand berms, the tent which I lived in was approximately ¾ of a mile from where the twenty foot long metal box which I called an office rested. I was working the late shift then, much as I do now, and on one particular night, while on my way to the office, a sandstorm kicked up.

It was probably the worst sandstorm I saw while there, and it took me about an hour to walk the ¾ of a mile; which was really fun to do, since the camp was guarded by a bunch of 18 and 19 year old, poorly trained (and some literally insane) kids with automatic weapons who probably were scared out of their minds and would rather shoot a shadowy figure moving suspiciously across the wasteland than not, lest they get yelled at by some idiot. Eventually, though, I made it into the office, a little worse for ware, but I made it, damn it. It was video game time.

In the morning, I walked out to use one of the many porta-johns which lined our sand perimeter. Unfortunately, they were all knocked over. “That sucks,” I thought, before peeing into a water bottle and throwing it in the trash. What I didn’t think of was the fact that those porta-johns had been knocked over in the sandstorm the night before, while I was slowly making my way across base.

About an hour later, I crapped my pants.

Then, I vomited.

Followed up by another crap of the pants. And more vomiting.

This cycle continued all morning, before I finally made my way to our units medical station, where I was informed that the night before, while I was in the sandstorm, I had inhaled particles of shit from the knocked over porta-johns. Which explained why I could no longer control any of my bodily functions, I guess. Once they were certain I was done throwing up, they hooked me up to an IV and had me take a nap. I slept for a good hour before I woke up to find my buddy Will standing above me.

“What’s up, dude?” I said to him groggily.

“You fucking pussy,” he replied.

Thanks for caring, friend.

I stayed in the medical tent for another hour or so, before they let me go back to my tent, where I was supposed to stay in my sleeping bag for the next couple of days. No problem with that.

(As I was leaving the medical tent, I crapped my pants again. It was really getting old by that point in time.)

And by the time I was healthy enough to get out of my sleeping bag and get back to normal, lazy work, I was down to 170 pounds. So that was a ten pound drop in less than one week.

Following that, spring sprung, the temperatures started getting well into the triple digits, I had no booze, got by pretty much only on canned fish and Camel Lights; a few months later, I was skinny as a crack head… and yeah, I can see pretty easily how I looked “lean and not fat” while living in the desert.

(Dick.)

And how did I gain all of that weight back, you wonder? Fried chicken pizzas, three times a day, five times a week, for six months straight. (I was in a very weird place at the time.)

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Elsewhere around the interwebs:

Crap! Damn! Boob! Cock! Tim Howard ignores his turrets and shuts out Mexico.

More on the futbol front, Slack LaLane’s European Vacation rolls into Aston Villa.

The All-Time Saint Louis Baseball Cardinals tourney is about to get started.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Labels: Tales From The Rear, That Time I Ate Shit