Checkup...

"How tall are you and how much do you weigh?" my doctor asked me as he pulled a ratty paper disk out of his white coat.

"Six-one, six-two? Two-sixty last I checked about a year ago."

"Hmm..." He's sporting a goatee now which makes him look a lot like Peter Gabriel. This comforts me.

"Is that a BMI chart?"

My doc looks at me out the corner of his eye, "... Yup."

"I don't trust those things."

I'm not a fat guy. I'm a big guy.

There was a documentary on Discovery years ago about Roman gladiators. One part of the program described a gladiator's diet which consisted of mostly broth, wheat and barley and the occasional meat.

The common Hollywoodized perception of a gladiator was shown on the left side of the screen:

A still shot of Russel Crowe; rippling muscles glistening with sweat and blood, his sword and shield triumphantly raised, standing in the middle of the Colosseum and roaring behind his scary, customized helmet.

On the right was a composite sketch of what anthropologists and historians agreed a gladiator would really look like:

Me.
Shirtless.
Wooden shield in one hand.
Chewed-up sword in the other.
Looking VERY unimpressed with the artist.

I felt proud to be a genetic throwback. My body was designed for two things; extreme physical labour and brutally killing other people in combat. I'm a front-line farmer. "45th generation Roman."

A thousand years ago I'd have been a celebrity. Rich, young, noble-women would have paid my manager good money for me to "entertain" them.

Today, Dr. Gabriel is telling me that I'm between level I and level II obesity.

"It's not the most technical device," he said, holding up his little, paper, fat-calculator. "But it gives me a rough idea."

He slid the disk around.

"If I take your height and put it at a healthy weight, according to the BMI, you should weigh 180 lbs."

"Doc, if I ever weigh 180 lbs, I'll be right back here talking to you."

"Yup. And we'll get that tapeworm out of you ASAP."