Weighty Matters

Earlier this week the Colonel made the mistake of stepping onto a set of scales, and now he has placed himself on what the Old Corps used to call "Weight Control."

There was a time in the halcyon days of his youth wherein the Colonel struggled mightily to maintain enough poundage on his slight frame to prevent himself from becoming a missile hazard in high winds. Was the Colonel skinny?

Is "I" Barrack Obama's favorite word?

Does Rush Limbaugh secretly wear slap shoes and a big red nose?

Is the National Debt a big number?

Does John Boehner use a box of Kleenex instead of a gavel?

Just "how skinny was the Colonel?," the five of you who regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon ask.

The Colonel was so skinny that if he turned sideways and stuck out his tongue, he looked like a zipper.

The Colonel was so skinny that a stick figure drawing by a third-grader was actually a pretty good likeness.

The Colonel was so skinny that the family dog kept trying to bury him in the back yard.

The Colonel was so skinny that in bright sunshine you could look right through him. Most girls, with the exception of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, did.

The Colonel was so skinny that in a t-shirt and shorts he looked like a pair of knees and a pair of elbows orbitting a pillow case.

When the Colonel stepped off the bus at OCS, a really funny Marine staff sergeant called out to him, "C'mere you. The Quantico Elementary field trip was on the other bus." After he finished hysterically laughing at his own joke, that Marine leaned in real close and growled "Candidate, how much do you weigh?"

"Sir, the Candidate weighs a hundred and twenty-five pounds, sir."

"Sir?!? Don't ever call me 'sir,' Candidate! I'm no officer. I work for a living! You call me Staff Sergeant. You got that?"

"Yes, Staff Sergeant!"

"That's better! Okay, Candidate, because I can barely see you when you are standing still, when ever you are talking to me I want you doing side-straddle hops."

OCS was such fun.

The Colonel was one of the few people in the history of the Marine Corps to ever have graduated from basic training actually heavier than when he started. The very funny staff sergeant made sure of that. He would cruise the tables at chow time taking food off of other candidates' plates -- "You don't need that roll, Fat Body!" --and putting it on the Colonel's.

The Colonel was a beefy one hundred and thirty-two pounds when he paraded across the grinder at graduation.

The scales upon which the Colonel stepped earlier this week indicated a mass just a tad greater than that. "Tad" defined in this case as the combined mass of the entire frozen pie selection in the freezers at Kroger. When the Colonel turns sideways and sticks out his tongue he looks like a zipper...on a bowling ball.

The Colonel's church will hold its annual Youth v. Adult flag football game in three weeks. If he doesn't lose some weight quick, they are going to make the Colonel play offensive lineman instead of his customary, albeit world's slowest, wide receiver.