SALESPERSON: That’s an eggplant. Say, you’re the guy who was in here earlier asking for fish hearts. Are you drunk or something?

YOU: Certainly not. As any idiot can plainly see, I’m taking my pulse.

SALESPERSON: With an eggplant? Why don’t you just squash your thumb against your artery like everybody else? You (with great dignity): If I wanted a squash, I would have selected a squash, wouldn’t I? I’ll take this eggplant, and make it snappy.

Next, using a stopwatch or an eggplant, count the number of times your head pounds in a minute; if you’re a healthy person, this should be a two—or three-digit number. Now you’re ready to start your exercise program. Turn on your television and watch one of those programs in which people in skimpy outfits leap around in time to recorded music under the direction of a cheerful leader.

Notice I say you should watch the program: under no circumstances should you actually do the exercises, because all that leaping around will reduce your brain to tapioca pudding. You’ll wind up like the people on the television programs, smiling vacantly and doing whatever the cheerful leader tells you to:

LEADER: Okay! Let’s kick those legs up high! Great! Now let’s bend way over! Terrific! Now let’s all say “I pledge allegiance to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.”

EXERCISERS: I pledge allegiance to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

LEADER: Okay! Now let’s all hop on one foot and put our fingers in our noses’. Great! Now let’s all take out our checkbooks and ...

After your exercise program, take your pulse again, then go into the kitchen and prepare a large, nutritious breakfast. You may not feel hungry, especially after all the pulse-taking, so to boost your appetite, think about how important good nutrition is to your heart. Think about what will happen to you if you don’t take good care of your heart. Think, as you chew your food, about what happened to the cow, the pig, the fish, and the earthworm whose hearts are sitting in Tupperware containers only a few feet away from your breakfast, sheathed in frozen slime. This should give you all the incentive you need to eat a hearty breakfast, after which you’ll be ready to face the day or go back to bed.

Lately, I have noticed large numbers of people staggering along the sides of major highways, trying to get in shape. I think they have the right idea: most of us Americans are out of shape. I know for a fact that I am.

When I was in high school, my friends and I were in terrific shape. Our bodies were fine-tuned machines. We would routinely drink quarts of warmish beer, then perform feats of great physical prowess. For example, during the Halloween Dance we carried a 1962 Volkswagen all the way up the front steps of Pleasantville High School, right into the lobby. I bet we couldn’t do that today. I bet you couldn’t, either.

Now I grant you that most of us no longer feel any great need to drink warm beer and carry Volkswagens into high schools, but the point is that if some emergency arose, if for some reason involving national security we had to carry a Volkswagen into a high school, we couldn’t do it. We’d go a few steps, then we’d drop the Volkswagen and collapse on the ground, gasping and heaving, and that would be the end of our national security. So I figure it’s time to get in shape.

But jogging is not the way to do it. For one thing, jogging kills your brain cells. The Army has known this for years; it forces recruits to jog every day, on the theory that some of them will lose so many brain cells that they will eventually reenlist. Your really dedicated joggers know it, too; in fact, it’s one of the main reasons they jog. The idea is that if you’re troubled about your job or world affairs, you go out and jog until you’ve killed whatever brain cells are responsible for those thoughts. The problem is that you may also kill the brain cells that remember your name and address, in which case you keep right on jogging, sometimes for days. This is what has happened to the people you see jogging along major highways, the ones with vacant expressions on their faces: they left home as nuclear physicists, heart surgeons, corporation presidents, and so on, but after a few hours most of them have library paste for brains.

Remember Jimmy Carter? Every day at the White House he used to wake up at the crack of dawn, develop some brilliant plan to save the economy, then head out for his morning jog. His aides would find him stumbling around hours later, sweaty and confused, his economic plan gone forever. Jimmy might have stood a chance in the 1980 elections if he had run against another jogger, but instead he faced Ronald Reagan. Ron has his horses jog for him and thus is able to preserve what brain cells he has, although I suspect his horses are fairly stupid.

My other objection to jogging is that even if you manage to jog yourself into shape, you still don’t look all that great. I mean, look at marathon runners: they appear gaunt and desperately hungry, like refugees wearing numbers. They’re always snatching scraps of food from spectators and stuffing them (the scraps of food) into their mouths. If you were to toss, say, a side of raw beef into their path, they’d all dive for it, teeth bared, and that would be the end of the marathon.

So I have rejected jogging as a way to get in shape. In fact, I was about to give up altogether when I discovered body-building magazines. Body-building magazines are published for people, mostly male, whose idea of being in shape is to have muscles the size of lawn tractors. You’ve probably seen these magazines: they’re full of pictures of people who have smeared Vaseline all over their bodies and are wearing bathing suits no larger than a child’s watchband; they are trying to smile in a relaxed manner but end up with more of an intense grin, because they have enormous muscles lunging out from all over their bodies, and Lord only knows how many bizarre chemical substances coursing through their veins.

These people obviously do not jog—I doubt they ever leave their gymnasiums, for fear their muscles will lunge out and kill innocent bystanders—but they are obviously in terrific shape. At least they look as if they’re in terrific shape, which is the important thing. If Jimmy Carter had spent his time body-building instead of jogging, he would be president today. His aides would have carried him into the presidential debates and propped him up against his lectern, and when it was time for him to make his opening statement, he would have just stood there, Vaseline shimmering on his muscles, grinning intensely at the audience. Who would have dared to vote against him?

So I’ve been reading body-building magazines, hoping to pick up some tips on getting in shape. The idea seems to be to lift a lot of heavy objects until you get dense. Density is much sought-after in the body-building world. For example, Muscle Digest magazine, in its October issue, refers to one promising body builder as “one of the most dense body-builders in senior level competition.” Evidently this is considered high praise.

So I plan to lift heavy objects, starting with my typewriter and working up to a 1962 Volkswagen, until I get fairly dense, after which I intend to smear Vaseline on my body and maybe run for president.