Leave my innards be

I feel sorry for people who don’t drink or do drugs. Because someday they’re going to be in a hospital bed, dying, and they won’t know why.

I don't remember who said that or whether I saw it on TV or something, but it made me smile, a little. Maybe it was Redd Foxx, but I can't be sure. I drink, but I don't "do drugs." By drink, if it isn't clear yet, I do not mean drink Coca-cola or mango juice; I mean alcoholic beverages, as John Mututho classified them, and in copious amounts when the mood, the company or the opportunity is right. Beer, wine, whisky, vodka, rum, fruity cocktails that come in tall glasses and have umbrellas...I drink it all.

I also eat lots and lots of red meat, some of it well done, some of it roasted, some of it dripping in vast amounts of frying oil. I don't eat much in the way of the green stuff, but I will choke down a lettuce salad every now and then. Then there are the pizzas, the Southern-style fried chicken, the over-salted peanuts from Nakumatt, the Frito Lays (the ridged ones are like the Devil's version of junk food temptation), the vast quantities of Coca-cola (I didn't say I don't drink Coca-cola) and the occasional Cardbury something with nuts. All this and the only exercise I get to do is usually forced on me when my employer refuses to service the lift to my eighth floor office, a hundred and fifty six steps away.

I have encountered the obsessives who think I am killing myself slowly and who aren't shy to pronounce on my impending demise, hooked up to machines to keep the body I have deliberately enfeebled alive. They take a particularly perverse pleasure in giving me their professional prognosis of the state of my kidneys, liver, lungs, bones, heart, lungs and, believe it or not, colon and rectum. They seem to have an x-ray knowledge of my inner self, so to speak, and they think that it is only a matter of time before my health is so compromised I won't be able to take a shit without screeching in agony.

These people live "clean" lifestyles, and they want me to join in. They are like the scolds from my church who hate the fact that I take pleasure in certain hedonisms without apology. These are the nutrition ambassadors who's way is the only way to a happy life. By and large, they seem happy, but I always get a sense of the utter joylessness of their task to convert the world to their side, especially when I roll my eyes at their prescriptions and entreaties and bite into another thick crust pizza and take a deep sip of my favourite Heineken - ice-cold. There is nothing joyful about judgmental scolds, even when they pretend that their health makes them happy.

Few of us are extremists when it comes to fast foods or alcohols. Few of us want to die in agony. But few of us will be motivated to live healthier lives by judgmental scolding from the keep-fit fanatics. No one likes fanatics of any shape. If you, Mr Keep Fit, were an example to follow, we would follow without you adopting that tone of voice with us. But because you have adopted that tone of voice, yo are not a role model, and we will follow you only long after Heineken N.V.  has gone out of business and wheat has been banned by all governments. Scolds suck and judgmental scolds suck balls.