Prologue

I played football and wrestled in high school. In college I tried both and failed because in high school I was bigger than everyone and I never had to work hard to be a star. So, I never learned to work for success. I was me and I deserved to dominate!

And I figured it was supposed to happen that one of the finest looking girls in school latched on to me. We married right out of high school and she started running up our credit cards. She kept telling me that we’d pay them off when I signed my professional football contract. She thought she was owed it as well.

I found out years later what my problem was.

Someone quoted Joseph Addison to me. He said, “Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance.”

And that for sure was me. I was rich in physical talent and I was arrogant enough to think that since I was better than everyone else in high school, I would always be. So, after I flunked out of college in the middle of my second year, you would have thought that I would have woken up and smelled the donuts.

Well, I smelled the donuts alright and I ate them. I ate everything I could get my hands on. I quit working out. I didn’t even go hunting with my dad anymore, something he really got on me about.

I had ballooned from a tight 6’4” 265 pounds to a very wobbly 6’4” 385 pounds. By the time that I walked in on my wife fucking another guy, my belly entered the room three minutes before my body. The problem was that in my mind I was still that tight 265 pound athlete.

My wife’s lover put short shrift to that. When I grabbed him and pulled him out of her, he spun around and hit me in my big, soft belly. Then he beat the living shit out of me. I don’t know when I went unconscious. I just remember a lot of pain and the taste of blood.