The World’s Strongest Librarian

  “Such as?”

  “Sleep. Injuries. Food. Time of day. Is why even the right question? It seems like you want me to ask something else.”

  “Let’s say that I can demonstrate exactly how you could know whether bench pressing today—no, let’s get even more specific—what if I could show you whether benching in the next hour would be positive or negative for you? Would you try it?”

  “You mean a way to learn whether it’s right or wrong?”

  “Those terms don’t apply. Just treat it in terms of better or worse in terms of the associations it causes in your body. Worse means it puts you in distress.”

  I wasn’t sure what we were talking about, but I wasn’t bored.

  “What should the purpose of a movement be?” he asked. “Now I want you to really think about this. ‘Should’ isn’t a word I use often, but it applies here.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You think you’re not, but you know this. How would you define fitness? Start there.”

  “Being in shape?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, it means you don’t get out of breath when you run, or that you can lift without it killing you, or—”

  “There’s more to movement and sport than running or lifting or being in shape. What’s a better question? About being in shape, what’s a better question?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, being in shape to do what? That’s what I want you to think about. Fitness has lost all meaning in this industry. Nobody asks, what is fitness? Fitness is the ability to perform a task. If someone is ‘unfit for duty’ in military terms, what does that mean to you?”

  “Unqualified to lead, or perform the task that’s required by the office or the job, I’d guess. A guy in basic training wouldn’t be ready for Colin Powell’s job. Like that.”

  “What made you think of Colin Powell? He’s not in combat, but correct. So why would physical fitness be any different?”

  “I’m still not sure what you mean.”

  “Fitness is the ability to perform a task. If you can do the task, you’re fit to perform the task. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how do we decide which brand of fitness to pursue? Which is superior? If fitness is task specific, is it logical for an organization like the RKC to say that they will take care of all of your fitness needs?”

  “No, probably not.”

  “Using kettlebells makes you better at using kettlebells. It doesn’t make you fit enough to paddle a surfboard against the current for ten minutes. Or to swim. It doesn’t mean you can bench heavy weight or that your tennis serve is more explosive. It means that you’re fit—that you have the requisite fitness to perform that movement.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, again, how will a person generally choose the sport or fitness activity that they perform?”

  “Well, I think they’d listen to what someone else says they should be doing, like a magazine, or do something that they like. Or maybe they’re required to do it, I mean to improve at it, for some reason, like being on a sports team.”

  “Exactly. Remember what I said about movements making you better or worse at any given time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you predict that a movement you enjoy makes you better, or worse?”

  “Better. Anything I enjoy makes me feel better when I’m done.”

  “Well, that depends. Doing a bunch of heroin might make you feel great short term, but it’s inferior in terms of its benefit to you. Okay. Let’s consider that a clue as to how one could or should choose an exercise. The enjoyment they get from it.”

  “Okay.”

  “How can you make a movement more enjoyable?”

  “I’m not sure. Uh…I like it when I can lift heavier. Are you talking about adding weight?”

  “No. I’m talking about movements that make you better. More mobile. It starts with a movement that makes you move better. Now, once you know what movement that is, how can you improve the movement that’s already doing something good for you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I really don’t, and I don’t do well when I’m put on the spot like this. I’ll keep giving you answers just to be saying something, but that means I’ll be saying things I haven’t thought through that really won’t tell you anything. This really isn’t how I think. I usually have to write something down before I really know what I think about it.”

  “Fair enough. But you do know. So here’s what you already know. Increasing fitness—one’s fitness to perform a task—means making the movement, or movements, involved, more efficient. Let’s say that efficiency means the quickest, smoothest way to pass between two points—point A and point B. Consider the bench press. Think about a military campaign, like Hannibal leading those elephants from start to finish. Or someone playing a piece of music on the piano. What do all of those things have in common?”

  “I can’t think of anything they have in common.”

  “They’re all just movements,” he said. “It’s all just movement. Lifting, thinking, running, swimming, having a go with the wife, breathing, swallowing. It’s all just movement. And the big movements are made of small movements. Anything that is a movement can be made more skillful. What do I mean by skillful?”

  “That you’re good at it?”

  “Not just that. Would you go see a concert pianist who made every song look like it was really difficult to play? Like she was just barely holding it together?”

  “I guess not.” I’d seen Tori Amos live. She made it look pretty easy, even when playing two pianos at the same time.

  “No, because you don’t have money to waste on things that aren’t worth seeing, and you don’t pay to see someone make a difficult task look difficult. Anyone can make hard things look hard. We pay to see mastery. To see people doing what looks impossible, and it’s impressive when they make it look easy. So tell me how this could apply to Tourette’s.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, then sort of waggled my fingers in the air as if doing the hula while sitting down.

  “Haven’t you been listening?” he asked. “I’ll tell you something Frankie Faires said. He said, ‘There’s no off switch to adaptation. Everything you do catches up to you. We get better at what we do. If your body is your biography, then you are, at any given time, a perfect representation of all of your resolved and unresolved stresses. You’re always getting better at having tics. It’s not your fault, but that’s what’s happening, in my opinion.”

  “Who’s Frankie Faires?”

  Frankie was a Texas-based martial artist who had apparently taught Adam about the things we were discussing.* Testing weights, testing foods, testing movements. “So, when you started moving away from the RKC stuff, was Frankie telling you to?” I asked.

  “Nobody tells me to do anything, but he helped me ask some different questions and decouple from some poor assumptions. But enough about him for now. You’ve got the pieces to start with.”

  We went to a grocery store. In the nutrition aisle I tested various supplements, trying to ignore the people watching me touch my toes while holding a bottle of zinc. Some of the bottles definitely seemed to change the toe-touch test. But when I tested a bottle of pills that promised to increase my estrogen naturally, and my range of motion greatly increased, I decided that I wouldn’t test any more supplements. It made me feel stupid and I wasn’t interested in taking estrogen or birth control because of a toe touch.

  “But how do you know the test works?” I said. “The toe touch?”

  “I could ask you the same thing about religion,” he said. “I just don’t get how anyone could believe in a church,” he said. “You can’t test it.”

  “What, you mean like with a toe touch? What, would you pray and then see if it increased your range of motion?”

  He snorted. “You say that like it’s a stupid idea. I can believe
in the test because my results strongly suggest that it works. I’ve got the numbers to back it up and you know it. What results can you show me that are going to convince me that any church is worth going to? Results that you couldn’t get in any other way? I mean, do you still go to your meetings?”

  “I go for an hour each week, mainly to help Janette with Max. He gets fussy.”

  “I’d get fussy too. So that’s the only reason you’re going? Someone else’s convenience?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “But what do you get out of it?”

  “Not much anymore. I don’t hate it, though. And honestly, it’s not worth the heartache it would cause the rest of my family. It’s not a bad thing for me to be there. They’re good people.”

  “But doesn’t your family know how you feel?”

  “You know, I’m actually not sure. I haven’t really talked about it, except for with Janette, so unless they have put it together on their own—no, they probably don’t know. But again, I don’t hate going.”

  “That’s like praising something because it could have been worse. Like saying, ‘I went to the zoo and the monkey only hit me with one piece of shit.’ That’s not a win.”

  “You asked! Settle down.”

  “But it’s all based on feelings, right?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “And that’s supposed to convince me?”

  “It’s not supposed to do anything to you. You asked.”

  “But if it’s not doing anything for you, why are you doing it? That’s all I want you to think about. What you believe makes no difference to me, but don’t you think your faith should make a difference to you, if you really have it?”

  “Honestly, it’s just easier not to talk about it. If it ever comes out, it’s going to break my mom’s heart.”

  “Why? I don’t get why it would be such a big deal.”

  “Well, because for her, me not believing in the church doesn’t just mean I’m not there on Sunday, it means that when we die, I won’t be with them. I don’t know if she’d ever say it to me that bluntly, but that’s how people who really believe see it. And I can’t fault her for that. I love her as much as she loves me. If it turns out that she’s right about the church, believe me, not being with them in the afterlife would break my heart too.”

  Adam stared at me. “See, this is why I like dogs. They don’t make things more complicated than they are.”

  I spent five days in Minot. I listened more than I talked. Adam asked questions. We trained at the gym once or twice each day. Then it was time to go home. We ate a final dinner at Red Lobster.

  Adam stared at his plate.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He looked up. “I—” he said, staring with his eyes wide open, all lit up and alert. Based on the look on his face he was about to say:

  “—am going to kill you, I hope you’re ready to die!” as he placed a forearm over my throat.

  “—am so disappointed.”

  “—surprised.”

  “—hungry.”

  But what he said was “I’m proud of you.” If this were a Bette Midler song, this is where the strings would swell. But even though Adam was complimenting me, it was unnerving. I felt like I’d been lined up in the sights of a rifle. His eyes were piercing. You’d understand if he was complimenting you with all the intensity of a mean dog who hopes you’re about to run.

  Praise, threats, lifting weights, or drinking—the guy commits. Maybe that’s what was so unusual about Adam; he spoke with total conviction. With eyes that made me think I’d wandered inside an unseen blast radius. As David Foster Wallace said, “Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you could have offed yourself a long time ago. I’ve seen guys turn out the light for less than you’re dealing with.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I—”

  “Stop,” he said. “Learn how to take a compliment, Josh. Don’t argue, don’t joke at your own expense, and don’t tell me I’m wrong. One of the problems I see with civilians is that they’ve never been forced to rely on themselves. I’m not saying you’ve got to go to war to know what’s up, but you learn things about yourself. You really know what you’re made of. You really learn whether you believe in yourself. I don’t think you’re half as confident as you act like you are. So you know what I think you should do about that?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Forget about what you think about you. You just take action and let someone else be right about you. Me, your parents, your wife, I don’t know, my dogs. They like you. Let someone else be right.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, I will.”

  Then he rhapsodized about a helicopter whose guns fired bullets the size of Red Bull cans.

  On the way to the airport Adam asked, “What did you learn this week?”

  “I learned that there is a store called Sophisticated Man of Minot by your gym. And that’s where you can buy bowler hats.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, okay, if I remembered one thing you’ve said, what would you want it to be?”

  “Two things. Remember how bad that woman’s haircut was, and don’t let that happen to you. Second: Test everything that can be tested. As soon as you think you know something, that’s when you stop questioning it. Understanding kills curiosity. It’s—I won’t say it’s a problem—but it’s common with religions. Understanding kills progress. That’s not ideal. Here’s your mission. Pick a movement, preferably one that you do constantly—I’m not going to give you more clues—and improve it. Make it easier. Make it more efficient. Test it out often. See what happens with your tics. Then report in in a couple of months.”

  “Why do I have to remember her haircut?”

  “Are you serious? Because that shit was comedy gold, that’s why.”

  I got out of the car at the airport, took my bags out of the trunk, and nearly screamed when I turned around. Adam was right behind me. Somehow he’d left the car and snuck up on me in complete silence. I put out my hand. He shook it and pulled me in close, delivering two emphatic whacks to my back. “You did good, buddy. Keep going. This is about one thing: How many questions you’re willing to ask.”

  Then he got in his car and drove away.

  “Good-bye,” I said to the car.

  “So how was it?” said Janette when I got home.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Pick a movement and improve it. I wanted to improve my dead lift. A dead lift is simply picking something up off the ground. But I couldn’t deadlift constantly without paying a price, not if the weights were heavy. My back would give out, or I’d burn myself out with fatigue, or or or…Adam couldn’t have meant dead lifts. I took out a sheet of paper and listed movements that I performed on a daily or near-daily basis.

  Kettlebell presses, snatches, and squats.

  Dead lifts with a barbell were already ruled out, but anytime you lift anything off the ground it’s a dead lift, so I put a question mark by it.

  Bench press—no.

  Running. No.

  Walking? That seemed possible. I walked every day and I knew it could be more efficient. My feet have always everted to ten and two. Not ideal. Maybe I could focus on that while I walked. Was that what he meant?

  What else? Sitting, standing, lying down, getting up from various positions.

  Eating was a movement. Hands and arms and fingers involved in the manipulations of food and utensils. The mouth, jaw, and tongue involved in chewing. I could probably eat more efficiently, but what would that have to do with my tics?

  Breathing.

  Swallowing.

  Blinking.

  Squinting.

  Scratching my itches.

  Brushing my teeth.

  As I wrote, my eyes returned to “breathing” over and over. The pen slowed.

  Breathing.

  I lis
ted the times when my tics were almost always better. Talking. Playing the guitar. Sleeping. Reading, if I could get absorbed in something. Writing.

  What did they have in common? I always assumed that these activities pushed the tics out because they took too much processing power in the brain. They used up my mental resources so there was nothing left for Misty.

  But sleeping didn’t fit that list. What if it had nothing to do with how complex the tasks were? What else could they all have in common?

  And there it was. The breathing. It was the breathing. It had to be. These were the only times where I was completely unaware of my breathing; this was when my breathing was least likely to be interrupted by tics. Did that mean the lack of air caused the tics? I didn’t know, but now I could experiment.

  Was breathing a movement? Yes. It was lots of movements. More things were involved in one inhalation and exhalation than I knew. Did it have a point A and point B? Yes. If standing at rest was point A, couldn’t a full inhalation be point B?

  The next day at work, I went into the fitness room at lunch.

  What would breathing better mean? If nothing else, I could examine how I breathed. I tried to relax. My arms hung at my sides. My shoulders, neck, and jaw all settled. I tried to focus, to draw my attention to any part of my body that moved with my breath, or that was involved in any way.

  How often do I breathe? Well, duh, “constantly” was the answer, but could I change it? It seemed like I was taking a lot of breaths per minute.

  How quickly do I inhale? It took less than two seconds. The exhalation was just as brief. This seemed fast.

  How deeply do I breathe? I inhaled beyond my usual stopping point and kept expanding my lungs. It felt so good that at some point I started holding the air in. I expelled it with an abrupt cough. Why had it felt so good? As epiphanies go, “breathe more” seemed kind of lame. Too simple.

  I had inhaled for four seconds. More than double the length of my typical breaths. I tried again but was interrupted by Misty, who didn’t like this. Annoyed, I reset, tried to calm myself for another go, but it was no good. I opened my mouth and snapped my front teeth together. It would be a while before I could attempt another breath in a ticless state.