Chapter 8: 230 Pound Throat
When I was seventeen, I discovered weight training with my friend Bill. This was the summer before my senior year. We became dedicated and pushed one another. On Mon, Wed, and Fri, we had two-hour workouts. I went from a ninety-pound bench press to two hundred fifty in three months. One afternoon I was attempting to bench two thirty, Bill was spotting. I pushed, and my right hand slipped due to sweat. The weight dropped to my throat. If it had hit my chin, it would have shattered. The Adam's apple most certainly would have been crushed. The bar hit the soft tissue between. Bill instantly pulled the weight straight up and saved my life. A miracle. We tried to have him do this again, he couldn't. His pituitary gland had instantly released massive quantities of endorphins, thus the Incredible strength.
Bill told me on a Friday after school to buy some gin to get a great buzz. I went up to the state liquor store trying my best to look old, this wasn’t easy as I had just started shaving. I placed my hand on the counter, so the manager could see my senior high school class ring, and said in the deepest voice I could muster that I’d like some gin please. Lo and behold, he sold it to me. Bill came over home at 4:30 and asked if I bought the gin. I showed it to him, and he said that’s sloe gin, a woman’s drink, and wouldn’t get a fly high. He left and went up to the bar. I wanted to party and drank the fifth in 20 minutes. I drove my GTO up to the bar to meet Bill and drink some beer. I sat on the bar stool, ordered a beer, and the gin really started to kick in. Bill reached over, grabbed the back of my shirt and tore it a little. I, in turn, tore his shirt off his back and he started laughing. He explained he was wearing my shirt. This really irritated me, I wanted to fight. This was not a bright idea, as I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag. We went outside, he turned his back on me and I punched him in the back of the head. He wrestled me to the ground, pinning my arms, and told me I was drunk. After a couple of minutes, he let me up, and I asked him to hit me. He turned his back on me, so again I punched him in the back of the head. He wrestled me back down and was sitting on my chest, trying to calm me down. The third time I asked him to hit me, he knocked me out. I remember waking up on the pool table and all of a sudden, it’s 7:00 am, and I’m sleeping on a glider in a neighbor’s front yard. I had no idea where my car was and didn’t have a clue how I arrived there. I vomited for hours on Saturday and was still hung over on Sunday. I haven't drunk sloe gin to this day.
Years later, Bill married and had two sons. I owned an appliance company, and he delivered for me. I sold the service end of the business to him, and he made a good living the rest of his life. He wanted to baptize his wife and sons and after calling different churches he became irritated with all the hoops the institutions wanted him to jump through. He became a minister from an online course and baptized his wife and sons in the Ohio River. In his fifties, he developed a very rare form of blood cancer, not leukemia. His pain was insanely intense. He said, imagine your leg is broken, and it's not. The pain would move to his arms, wrists, hands, feet, calves, and back. The doctors had him on morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl and percocet. His sons bought him a several thousand dollar recliner, and Bill said it would take him several hours to get in the zone where he was somewhat comfortable. His family put him in hospice and the cancer metabolized in his brain and he died. He told me the kind of pain he endured was so horrible, he looked forward to leaving the body. No fear of death, at all.
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