Santa’s Dilemma
By Mark Sconce
Every year about this time,
St. Nicholas begins
To organize his trip abroad
Amid the children’s grins.
But news this year at Christmastide
Includes a sober piece:
That certain children far and wide
Are shockingly obese.
Never one to shirk his duty,
Old Santa makes a vow:
“By shedding from m’own big booty,
I’ll show the children how
To take a little pride.
I’m setting the example
For children far and wide
To make us all less ample!
Ho, Ho, Ho.”
And so Dear Santa shopped around
To find the right equipment
To help him shed his portly pound
Before the Great Transhipment.
Mrs. Claus encouraged him
Throughout the days and nights.
She fantasized him slim and trim
And bought him trendy tights.
The active adult that he is
Soon led to Leisure Village,
Where fitness is a booming biz,
Where dumbbells curl and curl…
The Fitness Center
The Gallery of grunt and groan,
The Palisade of pain,
Where fitness buffs are wont to hone
Their muscle and their brain.
Welcomed as an honored guest,
Dear Santa needed training,
To finally look and feel his best
Trans-fatty foods disdaining.
Cybex apparatus staff
Were there to spot poor Santa,
Who cut his workout time in half
So he could drink a Fanta.
They worked his pecs; they worked his glutes,
Abdominals and deltoids.
They exercised him to his roots
And retrofit his rhomboids.
They goaded his gamellus,
His traps and pectoralis;
They lowered his patellas
And pulverized his pelvis.
Santa finally had enough.
To fitness world, “Adieu.
I’ll never be a fitness buff
And be a Santa, too.”
The residents all rallied round
To bid a fond farewell,
And everyone could hear the sound
Of Santa’s ‘scape from hell:
“Merry Christmas to All
And to All a Good Night!”
For more information about Lake Chapala visit: www.chapala.com
