I am the mother of four and grandmother of six and I, like my mother before me, am a dietaholic.  Being thin is almost like the medal you get to show people how hard of a worker you are.  My husband Paul has a room full of medals and football trophies and I always tell him that my trophy room is inside a button-down shirt and some polyester slacks. HA!

My mother was a very thin woman who loved to talk about the importance of exercise to anyone she met.  She would always tell us kids to run to and from school, because walking wouldn’t burn as much fat.  She wouldn’t even let us back in the house unless she could see perspiration glistening on our foreheads. 

My mother was also a mean woman for the majority of her life, but she was a thin mean woman and she said that that was all that mattered in the long run.  I remember her saying to me, “Diane, you should always make it a goal to be thin and beautiful because that is how you want to be remembered.  You don’t want your fellow students looking at their yearbooks fifty years from now and remembering you as the girl whose butt looked like two oxen walking side by side…do you?”  Of course I didn’t and have been exercising regularly ever since.

My husband Paul, however, does not view health and exercise the same way my mother did.  Whenever I suggest that we exercise together, he always says, “If God intended for man to exercise, he wouldn’t have created things like Hot Dog on a Stick, King Sized Candy Bars and As the World Turns!”  Paul at one time was a big fan of soap operas because he was certain that at some point one of them would show what a baby from an incestuous relationship looked like.

Paul’s hatred for exercising almost completely went away after an unfortunate incident with a nail gun and a deer that had somehow gotten into our backyard.  Needless to say, we had to visit the emergency room where it was determined that Paul was in need of Tetanus and Rabies shots.  I first realized something was really wrong when on the way to the hospital, Paul began screaming at me to go faster because it was supposed to be a full moon that night and he didn’t know how long he had until he would change into a metal animal. 

The trauma of the incident, coupled with the wounds Paul had received, became too much for him and he began hyperventilating and foaming at the nose.  His panicking eventually progressed until he ended up fighting the nurses and doctors because he thought they were going to try and put him down.  The only way I could think of to calm him down was to run my fingers through his hair and rub his ears.  However, this caused him to have a twitch in his leg and he ended up breaking an incubator, which took us years to pay off.  Once Paul came home and got some much needed rest, he was back to his normal self.

A few days later, however, we noticed that he was getting some sort of an allergic reaction to the shots he was given.  The doctors ran some tests and drew some blood and told us that it wouldn’t take long and would most likely need some antibiotics to clear up the infection.  It took almost five hours until they finally came back with puzzled looks on their faces.  Paul and I instantly became worried that there might be something seriously wrong with Paul’s health.  One doctor began asking Paul strange questions like: Where were you born?; Have you ever been to Tanzania?; Have you ever worked near strong chemicals?; Were you ever tortured by the Chinese government?; Do you consume large amounts of Doritos chips? (I think they asked that because he did kind of smell like Doritos that night); Have you ever met Charlie Sheen?; and have you ever dated anyone from Peru? 

We were both confused as to why so many questions and it wasn’t long before we demanded answers.  Our doctor looked at the other doctors as if to get approval to tell us what was wrong.  He then turned back towards us and said, “It appears Mr. Rudding that your blood type is not A+ as your records would suggest.  The tests we ran conclude that your blood type, classified as “Type F” blood, has only been found twice before.  The only other humans that have ever had this blood type were a fourteen year old boy that was raised by wolves in Africa and a man working as a Machu Picchu tour guide.”

The doctors explained that they would like Paul to allow them to run more tests.  Instead of being discouraged, Paul was ecstatic and loved the idea of telling people about his uniqueness.  He even changed his vanity plates from “A+” to simply “F.”  That only lasted for a few weeks after Paul endured a lot of razzing at work about how his plates now looked like his grades did in High School.  Paul was so upset at his fellow employees that he went back to the DMV and tried to change the plates to read, “A+ ALL THROUGH SCHOOL AND I CAN PROVE IT!”  Of course the lady at the DMV told Paul that there simply wasn’t enough room on the plate and that he was restricted to eight characters only.  Paul then demanded that the DMV use a smaller font and when Paul became loud and unruly, he was finally kicked out.  A few weeks later we received the new plate in the mail, which read, “A+ ALL T.”

I am so glad Paul is unique.  If he weren’t, then I wouldn’t know how to entertain myself sometimes.  I guess I would have to start watching soap operas again.