One of a million conversations over the years between my brother and me: “Well I think you’re wasting your dime. You won’t hear back from them. Stamps cost thirteen cents now.”
“That comic book is five years old.”
Me: Scrawny, tiny, waiflike, weak. Compared to my friends, most of whom were one or two years younger than me, I was small, even next to them. Skinny, like a stick, like a twig. At twelve, that matters. Other boys were fitting up, girls noticed. At sixty-one, this sort of thing still matters, but being too thin is no longer my concern.
My brother was right, my comic book, Ritchie Rich, was at least five years old. No twelve-year-old would buy that. It’s a little kid’s comic. Ritchie Rich chronicles the adventures of the wealthiest child in the world. They tagged the front cover with the catchphrase “the poor little rich boy.” I’m not sure what attracted me to this comic, maybe it was my training manual for white privilege. Regardless, not throwing it away after I outgrew it, that makes perfect sense. I never threw anything out as a kid. In the fifth grade, I bought a souvenir pair of wooden dice from Colonial Williamsburg. I still own them.
Big Lug: {playing ball on the beach kicks sand on Mac and Mac’s Relatively Hot Girlfriend (RHG)}
Mac: {With what I assume is a pipsqueak voice} Hey, quit kicking that sand in our faces!
RHG: That man is the worst nuisance on the beach.
Big Lug: {Grabs Mac by his scrawny upper arm} Listen here. I’d smash your face only you’re so skinny you might dry up and blow away.
Mac: The big bully! I’ll get even some day.
RHG: {Patronizingly} Oh don’t let it bother you, little boy. (Seriously, this is what she says).
Mac sends away for Charles Atlas’ serialized mail-order books demonstrating his Dynamic Tension method of body building, which is essentially pushing and pulling against immovable objects—walls, doorjambs, opposing body parts (such as one hand against the other). In the next scene, Mac is ripped. In ‘seven days’ he added seventy pounds of muscle. Back on the beach, Mac punches the Big Lug on the end of his chin and knocks him out cold.
RHG: Oh Mac! You are a real man after all!
Even Hotter Girl on next beach blanket: Gosh! What a build.
Do you find it amazing that this works? Looking at the “Made a Man Out of Mac” Wikipedia page, a whole list of male celebrities, including several boxing greats, graduated from the Charles Atlas program. How many noncelebrities did? How many at least sent away for the free booklet? The world is crammed with skinny boys like 1970s-me hoping to get swole so we can intimidate men and attract women.
Even though I stiffed the company three cents on postage, they sent me their booklet. Charles Atlas laid out the basics, explaining in general terms why Dynamic Tension worked. Too many years have passed to remember any specifics, but there was something about how cats can jump many times their height even though they don’t exercise—they just press their front paws hard against the floor when they stretch.
The Atlas program was so simple, so obvious, I never paid to receive the books, because I figured it out for myself. For about three days I pressed my palms together, wrestled against doorjambs and stretched like a cat. Then I stopped altogether and remained a skinny little kid until I found beer five years later. It took me another five years after that to get in shape, but I did that at a Nautilus fitness center lifting weights, not trying to bench press my car.
The message from the Atlas comic is disturbing. Without big muscles, you’re not a man. The heyday of the Charles Atlas program ran from the thirties into the eighties. This is the fodder generations of boys grew up on. It’s no wonder today’s vocabulary is rife with hyper-masculinized phrases such as “man-up” and “grow a pair,” or my all-time favorite, once directed at me because I didn’t want to sign up for a 10K that had over 30,000 participants, “Don’t be such a sissy-la-la.” Testosterone! Testicles! Pectorals! These make the man. These attract envy and admiration… or so I learned as a child.
Since my carpal tunnel surgery a month ago, I can’t do my normal exercise routine of pushups and weighted rows. Now, every morning, when I finish my sit-ups, I lie on the floor, first on my back and then on my stomach, and do a series of Dynamic Tension exercises. Not because I want to get ripped like Charles Atlas and Mac, no one would ever mistake me for swole, but simply because I want to show my muscles that while I heal, I still remember they are there. Fifty years later, I’ve learned this Dynamic Tension thing really works.
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Internal Phtoto: Wikimedia
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
