I joined a gym in early January of this year. I'd gained more weight than I'm comfortable carrying, and thought that if anything could stop me from increasingly looking like my erstwhile pet hamster Mike, it would be spending great amounts of time frenetically running on a thing that just kept going round and round so that I never went anywhere at all, just like ol' Mike used to spend great amounts of time frenetically running on a thing that just kept going round and round so that he never went anywhere at all.

Maybe I'll just fill an old refrigerator box with shredded paper, and start sleeping in it. Might as well get busy fulfilling the destiny God has in mind for me, which is clearly to become a giant hamster.

Cool. I always wanted to drink out of one of those glass pet bottles, with the tube and black stopper. I love those things.

And how I used to love ol' Mike. He once chomped my finger so hard I almost passed out, but how else would I have learned the invaluable life lesson of never touching a sleeping hamster? And how else would Mike have learned he can fly?

Yes, if there's one thing nature teaches us, it's that blood and flying somehow go together.

Anyway, the gym. I joined. I sweat. I groan. I make faces in public I'd be embarassed to make in private. And at least once every time that I'm pounding away on the treadmill, I think back to my old pal Mike the hamster, and reflect upon the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he knew more about life than he was letting on.

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