Thank You, Redhead Guy

Lifting alone and its consequences

When I was a kid, I was kind of stupid. Just being honest. I was smart when it came to some stuff like reading books and … I guess, telling people about those books—but I was almost incredibly stupid when it came to other stuff, like basic common sense.

I can’t think of a better example of some classic AP-certified foolishness than one autumn day my freshman year of high school when I learned that no man is an island in the dumbest way possible.

(Well actually, there was the Ernest Shackleton tramp stamp, the root beer jacuzzi explosion, the Irish line dancing robbery, but those are all for future newsletters.)

At fourteen years old, I was as handsome as I was charming, which is to say that I was ugly and odd. Having started at a new school, I found myself overwhelmed by all these strange people. The thought of trying to make new friends filled my awkward soul with terror, so I decided to forget the whole thing. I didn’t need anyone. I could be a lone wolf. (OK, honestly maybe more like a lone chipmunk.)

I didn’t talk to anyone, ate my lunch alone, and immediately shoved a book in front of my face if someone looked at me. The second the final bell rang, I was out of there. My first month of high school, I probably strung together about fifteen total words, including “excuse me,” “sorry,” and “I swear that mongoose isn’t mine.”

Was it great? No. But what else was a socially awkward, misshapen little man to do? Say hello to people? Are you nuts?

Then at some point in October, with too much free time on my hands, I had an idea.

“Perhaps if I, young Archer, were to lift weights, I could transform my pubescent body and become formidable in both muscle and mind,” I thought.

Perhaps one of the reasons I didn’t have friends was because I talked like that. But that was a revelation for another day.

Anyway, I decided to give lifting weights a try after school. I guess I thought it might boost my confidence or make me more attractive, although in retrospect I really could have just plucked my unibrow. I went to our high school weight room wearing bright blue basketball shorts that nearly went down to my ankles and a Yu-Gi-Oh T-shirt I’d last washed sometime around seventh grade. (Don’t judge. I’m a late bloomer, OK? Someday, I’ll bloom.)

Suffice it to say, I was more Jesse Eisenberg than Jesse Ventura. While I would later learn to appreciate lifting weights in college, chubby-cheeked 14-year-old me was weak, not trying very hard, and also, as I’ve mentioned, stupid.

And this is where our story takes an unfortunate turn. Because, you see, one particular lift can be very dangerous if you’re weak, not trying very hard, and stupid. That would be the bench press. Particularly, the bench press without a spotter. When you lie down and lift a heavy barbell over your neck, held at bay only by your arms, you really want to be sure you can lift that thing back up. And, if not, that someone is behind you to help.

But in my unrelenting genius, I decided that I would try bench pressing without a spotter because getting someone to spot me would involve talking to people, which was obviously off the table.

After a warmup, I tried a few 10-pound plates on each side of the bar, and I actually kind of rocked it. I was stronger than I thought. Honestly, I’ve always been pretty good at pushing things away from me (just ask my ex).

And so, bolstered by the ease of those first sets, what I did next was, uh, yeah … I threw a 45-pound plate on each side.

Let me just toss out a PSA here—never do this. Ever. My God. It is an absolute moron move, embarrassing to even admit. I went from benching 65 pounds to 135 without the slightest hesitation. It was the equivalent of deciding that I could run a half-marathon because I’d jogged a mile.

I laid on the bench, grabbed the bar and lifted it off the rack. I lowered it to my chest and began to push it up.

I couldn’t.

If you’ve ever failed on a bench press before, you know it is not a good feeling. I was giving it all my strength, my arms aching and trembling, and the bar wouldn’t move more than an inch off my chest. I struggled, trying to buck the barbell back onto the rack, and then my muscles gave way. The bar hit my chest. As I twisted and kicked, trying to keep it from rolling onto my throat, I spoke my sixteenth word of the school year:

“Help.”

Two hands appeared from behind me, lifted the barbell, and slammed it onto the rack. I took a gasping, frantic breath, scrambling up from the bench. Behind me, there was this big guy with a bright red hair and pale skin straight out of a Joyce novel.

“Thank you,” I half-coughed.

“Don’t do that again,” he said. “That was way too much for you. Get a spotter.”

Breathing like a winded water buffalo, I couldn’t think of a response so I just nodded at him, and he left. I was mortified. I could feel the other people in the weight room staring at me, the weird kid who never talked to anyone and always smelled like pickles. (They’re a healthy midday snack, OK?) I tried my best to act nonchalant—maybe I meant to drop the barbell on my chest; maybe that’s what all the cool kids were doing. I don’t think it worked.

I got out of there fast, my bright blue shorts swishing around my calves. As I tried to catch my breath and slow my beating heart, I knew my frightening failure could have been easily avoided if I had a spotter. In fact, if someone had been lifting with me, they probably could have told me adding 70 pounds to the bench press might not have been the soundest decision.

Thank goodness for that redhead guy. I have no idea who that dude was, but I needed his help. I had been a fool to try lifting that weight on my own. And maybe, I realized, I was a little bit of a fool to try living life on my own.

It was a heart-pounding, sweat-slicked lesson that I very much needed. There’s only so much you can do by yourself. And it’s a lot less than you can do with people around you. No man is an island—that’s a universal truism I think we all stumble on at some point. For me, it took nearly crushing my larynx.

I left the weight room that day embarrassed and ashamed, and I figured it would probably be best if I didn’t come back. No part of me wanted to face any of the people who had seen me nearly take myself out in the dumbest way possible.

And so I didn’t.

But, remembering how that barbell felt against my chest, I did try something else the next week.

With my head hung low, my baggy khakis hiked up high, and a slightly better idea of the limitations of a lone chipmunk, I cautiously, carefully, meekly crossed the lunch room to a small table filled with other guys and brought my total word count up to twenty-three:

“Mind if I sit here?”

---