The Incredible Shrinking Pete

Yes, many late nights I am downstairs in the kitchen furiously spraying aerosol cheese into my mouth and I am wondering if the ghost of my dead grandmother is standing right next to me, arms crossed, shaking her head, but lately it hasn’t mattered. No, The Incredible Shrinking Pete isn’t what happens when I sit in a swimming pool all day; it’s the result of what happens while training for a marathon: all of the Easy Cheese and Choco Tacos that once went straight to my thighs now disintegrate into thin air during consumption. Used to be, you could put your ear against my belly button and hear not only the ocean, but also Chewbacca wailing in the distance. Nowadays you just hear grasshoppers chirping. It’s nice.

Let me be clear, however, that I still have a beer gut. It’s just a smaller, less frightening one.

OK so there was this chick at a house party back in college that adored me for my self-deprecation. “Oh Petey, you’re just toooo cute,” she said, pinching my cheek, crinkling her nose, and when I told her about my beer gut she

was convinced it was fake modesty, triggering within her an uncontrollable desire to flirt which was driven by one part sexual curiosity, two parts obsession. So she followed me everywhere around the house, giggling, squealing, tossing her hair over her shoulder, trying to yank the bottom of my shirt up, demanding to see the washboard abs I was hiding.

After five minutes of being chased it finally occurred to me that she’d quit her harassment if I just simply gave in, so I turned around and let her lift up my shirt.

The girl frowned at what she saw: my big fat belly, the rolls spilling out and forming a crude face with lips. When she leaned in for a closer look, my rolls smiled at her and said, “BOO!,” which got the horrified girl covering her mouth and then running and screaming and flailing her arms until she jumped through a glass window, plunging three stories onto the parking lot asphalt below.

The music quickly stopped, and everyone in the room carefully tip-toed over to the window as pieces of glass debris continued to crack off the edge. They eyed the poor girl below, then slowly turned their heads to look at me.

Smiling my sinister smile, I looked around the room and said, “Who’s next?”

{Black = Reality, Red = Exaggerated Reality}