It’s 6:30 am. I am returning a couple of 35 pound dumbbells to their rightful place on the mirrored weight rack. I step back. What do we have here?

I see a heavily lined face, evidence of a full and sometimes foolishly lived life, less hair than yesterday, and more sun damage than my dermatologist recommends.

There’s no one around at the moment so I stop to take myself in. At first I can’t believe it. I have on an unforgiving Calvin Klein tank and femur choking shorts. My deltoids are jutting out like east-west  globes connecting my head and neck to my full chest and bulging arms.

The veins in those arms are like a blue garden snakes crawling towards my hands. I look around quickly to make sure no one is catching me in my act.

I launch into a side pose. I don’t have to pull my gut in because I don’t have one. For once in my life, my boobs push past my belly. Naturally.

I don’t have one of those clunky bodybuilder bodies with too much trapezius, a neck the size of a tree trunk, over sized arms and a too wide back. I look more like a fitness model, symmetrical, muscled and lean, which has always been the goal.

I don’t want to look like a goon in a business suit.

In street clothes you would have no idea I ever gripped a bar. The overhead lights and a coat of sweat bring my definition out in bold relief. This deserves more than a selfie, I’m thinking.

I look down at my legs. Ridiculous. They are shaped and ripped and veined from the miles they put in and the heavy stress applied at the squat rack.

What a piece of work.

Then that word flashes across my temporal lobe….elderly. Truth. I am an elderly man with less sand at the top of my hourglass than the bottom.

I’m elderly ….. if the actuarial tables are to be believed.

At 72, I don’t.