Keep the needles away from me
I’d like to state right now that I have never taken steroids
while producing this column. My
 personal trainer offered to inject various vitamins and
minerals into my buttocks to enhance the writing process, but I
have too much integrity to stoop to such a level.
Keep the needles away from me
I’d like to state right now that I have never taken steroids while producing this column. My personal trainer offered to inject various vitamins and minerals into my buttocks to enhance the writing process, but I have too much integrity to stoop to such a level.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m willing to stoop. For money, caffeine, or chocolate. Money isn’t everything, but it has a soothing quality. Have you, for instance, attempted to buy a pair of jeans lately? I was in a store the other day that sells jeans with holes in them for $150. The cost of dressing casual these days is astronomical.
 I am willing to compromise my integrity for enormous amounts of money. I would like to give it a try. It would be a terrible blow to my family and friends – until they got their Christmas presents. Then the whispering would stop.
 “My god, honey, Dan dropped a Lexus in the driveway!”
 “He didn’t drop it, it parked itself. Let’s inject vitamin B-12 into Dan’s buttocks and see what he gives us for Valentine’s day!”
 But let’s get back to steroids. One of my problems is the injection thing. I’ve had editors threaten to inject their fist into my head if I didn’t hurry up and finish a story, but none of them offered to inject vitamins into my buttocks. Eating pills, rubbing cream onto their skin, drinking from a shot glass – good Americans do those things. But injections are crossing the line.
 For sure, no one is injecting vitamins into my buttocks. Not my personal trainer, not Roger Clemens, not Mike Wallace, not Buddha, not Jesus.
 Let’s say you’re jillionaire Hall of Fame baseball player Roger Clemens and your personal trainer says “Rog, buddy, let me jab this needle full of vitamin B-12 into your buttocks, it will give you a little boost and help you fight off sickness and world hunger.”
 You’re gonna tell the personal trainer where to jab it.
 “You wanna inject me with vitamins?” you’d ask. “For crying out loud, just give me the gel caps, they dissolve fast enough.”
 If you’re willing to let someone who isn’t a doctor inject a substance into your bloodstream, it’s gonna be something stronger than vitamins. It’s gonna be something that makes you run faster and jump higher.
 And you wonder what you would do if you got caught. When us regular people get caught, we get suspended and lose our jobs. We suffer humiliation. And that’s for the easy stuff like alcohol, marijuana, and online celebrity gossip. It’s never easy stuff when it comes to sports stars, politicians, or celebrities. They always seem to shave their heads when they shouldn’t, or get accused of injecting Robocop syrum.
 I’m not saying Roger Clemens got caught. Or Barry Bonds. Sure, Barry’s head grew to the Taj Mahal of heads. Sure, Barry’s physical stature transformed from Michael Jackson to a Transformer. Sure, Roger got huge and became a little psychotic. Remember when he kicked a bat at Mike Piazza, and followed him down the first base line, cursing at him?
Roger and Barry just worked out a lot, and were extra competitive.
 Just like me when I write for The Pinnacle. I’m in a zone. Now Bob Valenzuela and Mark Paxton… I’d keep an eye on those guys. I think their columns might be performance enhanced. I think their personal trainers might be injecting stuff into their buttocks.
 All I can say is, in this case the truth won’t be setting anyone free.
