Weighted vests are like podcasts. Everyone has one. Your brother’s antisocial high school friend, Aaron, is now crushing it with an anthropological podcast about how humans evolved from chimpanzees. He has two vests in his hall closet. One is a blue finance bro vest; the other is weighted and black.

When I was in my first semester as a freshman in college, my mom was dying of cancer, and I had mono. I slept seventeen hours a day and could barely wake myself up to watch Stealing Home and eat before falling back asleep. I started college by almost failing all of my classes and sitting on the baseline of the basketball court so that the other guys on the team thought I was some sort of team assistant. In my first healthy practice, I drained seven threes in a row in the first five minutes. Then I kept flunking most of my classes and floundered through two depressing years. No one even knew she was sick.

I’ve never worn a fanny pack, but I’ve also never thought they were uncool. I think they rip. They are like acid-washed jeans. I don’t want them, and I won’t get them, but they are cool. So was the vest I got at Chess King at the Buckland Hills Mall in college with my stepbrother. I once wore it out without a T-shirt underneath. Still not sure about that move. My arms were stacked at the time, though.

My English teacher in eighth grade wrote on a report card that I had “severe cerebral atrophy.” She didn’t understand that I had somehow found solace as a new kid in school by messing with her. To be honest, she made crazy seem like a teddy bear sitting on a bench seat looking out of a window on cool Spring day. She was at her pinnacle.

I used to love working out. Now, I’d rather read a book. I don’t know who I would be impressing. How can I think I am fit and fat at the same time? Somehow, it’s possible. Maybe it’s more about forgetting how to have fun. I focus on things to avoid other things. What am I trying to scale, and why does the scale matter?

If I were carrying a heavy sack across the desert, I would probably lay it down somewhere and try to rest. I am 55 now, and I don’t have the physical fortitude that I used to. I’m someone’s aging dad who can pass for 42, with a body that feels like 61. Some mornings, I wake up feeling like a million bucks. Other mornings, I consult my Health chat to make sure I’m not dying. We are all dying.