Marilyn Monroe Was Stronger Than I Was As A Freshman

Neoneocon has a lost picture of Marilyn Monroe lifting weights, and I feel like less of a man.

In the photo, she’s working with an empty bar, but it has the weight collars on.

And I am shamed.

You see, my freshman year of high school, students in gym class could opt out of the normal activities to go down to the weight room beneath the high school stage and pump iron. On a couple of occasions, my friend Jim (who would later become the Goth King of St. Louis) and I would go down at my urging. I remember distinctly being unable to lift the bar for bench presses with the collars on, but if we took the collars off, I could lift the empty bar a couple of times.

And here’s tiny Marilyn Monroe besting me. Or a me of thirty years ago.

Somebody get me a protein shake. And one for Monroe, for Pete’s sake.

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