Thirty-one years ago, when I was a mere boy of seven, my mother fell very, very sick. She called me to her side and, in a voice weakened by pain, said, “Bob, whatever happens to me, I want you to remember that ...

“David,” I corrected. “My name is David.”

“I know that, you little snot,” she said. “I’m your mother.”

I have always remembered those words, despite the fact that my mother recovered completely and is fine today.

Hi, Mom.

1. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR COUNTRY. You can bet that the enemies of your country are fit. People in Communist nations are on a strict fitness program of waiting in line a lot and darting their eyes about nervously. We, too, must be fit, in case these Communists invade us. We must be ready to fight them in the streets and the alleys. The problem is that many of you have eaten so many Enormous Economy Size bags of corn chips and so much bean dip that you probably couldn’t fit into the alleys without the aid of powerful hydraulic devices. So you’d have to fight them in the streets, where you’d be easy prey for their blimp-seeking missiles.

2. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR CAREER. In the old days, your successful business executive was generally a spectacular tub of lard who had to be transported from business deal to business deal via private railroad car. But today’s top executives are lean, sleek, and fit. They eat nutritionally balanced meals, run ten miles every day, play tennis and racquetball, and work out regularly on Nautilus machines. Consequently, they have no time whatsoever for their work. Many of them don’t even know where their offices are. This is why the entire U.S. economy is now manufactured in Japan.

3. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR SELF-ESTEEM. There is no feeling in the world quite as wonderful as the feeling of being physically fit, except the feeling of eating pepperoni pizza. No! Wait! Disregard that last remark! What I’m trying to say is, when you become fit, everything about you changes. You have to buy new pants, for example. And you develop a whole new attitude about yourself. Instead of constantly thinking, “I am pasty and flabby and disgusting and nobody likes me,” you think, “People like me now, but only as long as I can keep from becoming pasty and flabby and disgusting again. I wish I had a pepperoni pizza.”

4. YOU OWE IT TO YOUR FUTURE. There’s nothing like regular, vigorous exercise to prepare you for the pain you’ll inevitably have to endure when you get older. Let’s say you’re in your mid-20s to mid-30s. Most of the time you feel pretty good, right? The only time you feel lousy is when you ingest huge quantities of alcohol and wake up the next day in an unfamiliar city naked with unexplained chest wounds. But as you grow older, you’re going to start feeling more aches and pains caused by the inevitable afflictions of age, such as the Social Security Administration, condescending denture adhesive commercials, and your children.

People who exercise regularly are prepared for this pain. Take joggers: you see them plodding along, clearly hating every minute of it, and you think, “What’s the point?” But years from now, when you’re struggling to adjust to the pains of the aging process, the joggers, who have been in constant agony for 20 years, will be able to make the transition smoothly, unless they’re already dead (see Chapter 12, under “Fitness and the Afterlife”).

We can learn a great deal about fitness from observing insects. You have probably noticed, for example, that most ants are in excellent shape. You almost never see a fat ant. What makes this especially interesting is that ants are always lugging around disgusting junk food, such as discarded Cracker Jacks many times the ants’ own size.

So how do ants stay so fit? The answer is surprisingly simple: they have no mouths. And this is a good thing, really, because it means they can’t scream when you spray them with Raid, although they do their best to writhe around in a piteous manner.

So anyway, what we have, in the ant, is a creature that engages in strenuous physical exercise all day long and never eats any thing. This is Nature’s Way to fitness, and we should emulate it if we wish to have the kind of taut, firm bodies that make ants the envy of the insect kingdom. Of course, we must always weigh this against the fact that they have a life span of maybe six weeks and are subject to attack by vicious beetles.

... now is the time to start that fitness program! Fitness is more than just another new “craze,” like flavored popcorn or parenthood. Fitness is a philosophy of life, a revolutionary new concept in personhood, and, ultimately, a way for people like me to become wealthy via the sales of fitness-related items such as this book.

But people like me can do only so much. We can take your money. After that, it’s up to you. If you don’t follow the diet and exercise program outlined in this book, it won’t do you a bit of good. Even if you do follow it, it may not do you any good. Nobody really knows what will happen. You’ll be the first person who ever actually tried this particular program. I meant to try it myself, before the book got published, but I had to buy snow tires. So maybe it would be a good idea to have a friend try it first, as a sort of test, and watch to see whether he actually does become fit, or starts lapsing into lengthy comas or something.

Well, that’s enough of a pep talk. Let’s square our shoulders and take that first step toward Becoming a Fitter You. Those of you who are unable to simultaneously square your shoulders and take a step may do them one at a time.

The first step in your new fitness program is to take the three simple tests below so we can find out how fit you are right now. Be sure to write down the results as you go along, so the police will be able to figure out what happened.

1. BODY FAT TEST

You’ll need:

A swimming pool

A dozen concrete blocks

Some stout rope

A knife

A primitive denizen of some remote fungal island in the South Pacific

Directions: Fat tends to make you float, so the idea here is to determine how many concrete blocks have to be lashed to your body to make you stay on the bottom of the pool for at least a minute without bobbing to the surface. Have your denizen perch by the side of the pool with the knife clenched in his teeth so he can dive down to cut you loose after the minute elapses.

(Caution: Some of your more primitive denizens have no understanding whatsoever of time, so their concept of a minute may in fact be closer to what we in Western Civilization think of as a fortnight. Also, whatever you do, don’t give your denizen one of those Swiss army knives with all the various confusing attachments. You don’t want him swimming down there and sawing at your rope with the spoon.)

How to score: Count the number of blocks required to keep you submerged. More than eight is very bad.

2. HEART TEST

You’ll need:

A friend

A job at an office building with elevators

A scorpion

Directions: Give the scorpion to your friend, and instruct him or her to wait a couple of weeks, until you’ve completely forgotten about it, then sneak up behind you at work and hurl it into the elevator with you just as the doors close. What we’re looking to determine here is whether your heart is strong enough to handle the rigors of an exercise program.