At the dawn of my adolescence, I was quite an inquisitive child. I enjoyed reading about Presidential History and random entries in my outdated Encylopaedia Britannica acquired prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. My mind wasn’t solely occupied with factual details of the past. There were practical matters that puzzled me equally. For one, I wondered what all of that extra space was for in the front of the Khakis I was forced to wear at any familial dress up outing and on the odd occasion of school picture day.  Save for when I pitched a tent underneath the table out of plain sight of the adolescent crush that inspired it, the mystery of the ample crotch area in my pants had confounded me.  I didn’t go out of my way to look at the genital area of other young boys to see if their packages were tightly draped in Dockers or as airily kept as mine own.  Having just learned about sex in the sixth grade from an awkward video in which an older brother teases his brother about penis envy, I momentarily considered that I was on the losing end of the battle of the sizes. 

 Aiding in my self-doubt was my 7^th period Social Studies teacher Mr. Hamilton, an awkwardly shaped man in his mid-50’s, with an ample sized gut, whom seemed to be filling out his pants just fine.  He sat on his desk sharing the intricacies of the French and Indian War according to the teacher’s edition as his inseam and waistband met in a longing embrace in concert where the zipper took the place of two opposing hands clasped within one another bringing together the shape of a perfectly rotund pelvic region. There was no accent on external organs, just a protruding ellipse that you couldn’t help notice if, like me, you were sitting front row center. 

 Not yet knowing enough about my own anatomy, I took this to be the mark of masculinity.  Mr. Hamilton was my first male teacher after an elementary school-run of teachers displaying fairly little feminine mystique and classmates who had yet to show off any attractive new developments. 

 The peculiar thing about my discovery with Mr. Hamilton is that once I noticed his excess in the frontal region, I started noticing it in the majority of all of the male teachers. 

I didn’t have a good deal of males in professorial positions during my junior high career, but those few grey-haired fellows all shared the common trait of paunch on their front porch.  I took their ability to entirely fill out their khakis as a sign of maturity that for me would come well past the onset of puberty of which I was on the doorstep.  I needn’t worry about filling out my pants just yet.  I had other things to worry about, as my camp counselors had informed me the previous summer. I was instead dreading the several weeks where I’d have to contend with the excruciatingly painful prospect of wax flowing out of my nipples or the curious and uncontrollable dispensing of a blue ejaculate that could come shooting out at any moment of arousal.  Maybe this would be a good time to start wearing blue jeans instead of the sweatpants I was wearing every day.

 Well, the years came to pass and I never had to contend with harvesting my nipples to make candles or Crayola-influenced seminal fluid.  I went through the regular slings and arrows of awkward adolescence, hair growing, voice somewhat cracking.  And it was a long time before I really had to consider the prospect of making my khakis fit better.  Truth is, I didn’t wear khakis that much if I could help it.  I was really uncomfortable with all of that excess room making it appear as though I maintained a measure of arousal, no matter what I might be doing. 

 I’m of the mind that pants should serve to mask happiness in your nether regions in the workplace or any other time it might be inadvisable to tell the entire room that you find at least one of its inhabitants to be a desirable sexual option.

 It wasn’t until my mid-to-late 20’s that I again began to think of the filled out Teacher’s-Edition Dockers of my early junior high experience. I’d all but forgotten about that potential rite of the puffy midsection that turned men into Dilbert or characters in a single-paneled Gary Larson drawing.  Perhaps it was because I wasn’t seated front row center with Mr. Hamilton with his chest of drawers in my face on a daily basis or maybe it was because I was young man, more concerned with the possibility of burgeoning career success and the feminine wiles of sweet young ladies than the onset of future where my bulky pelvic region might cause some fascination for future students of anatomy or current ones of 7^th Grade social studies. In all probability, I didn’t think about it much because I had been alternating between two pairs of jeans that fit rather well on a weekly basis and for most overly special occasions I took to my tailored suit. It wasn’t often I had occasion to slide into a pair of dress slacks.

 Crotch cabin space had nary weighed on my mind for a long time, until one fateful winter evening in my late 20’s.  At a party a friend was discussing the contemptible significant other of an acquaintance and in the midst of compiling a list of faults introduced the physical malady she so brilliantly referred to as a “front-butt.”  Bells went off in my head as if to imply that we did indeed have a winner.  “Ding! Ding! Ding!”  It was an epiphany. That thing that I had once so naively thought a natural part of human development now had a name, and it was not an appealing one. “The front-butt,” in this case had been formed on a woman. Picturing it on an otherwise reasonably attractive member of the opposite sex all of the sudden turned it into a ghastly deformity that not only afflicted men in their 50’s, but women in their 20’s and who knows what other demographics?

 All of the sudden, my normal strolls around the neighborhood were filled with sightings of those who were tall and lanky, petite and cute, and those sporting “front-butt.”  They were everywhere.  It’s not that I had never noticed them before, now their affliction was all the more apparent for the simple fact that it had a name.

 Then it happened.  It had been a particularly boozy stretch of 2007. The fall and then winter were filled with regularly scheduled trips to the watering hole of my local liking. I knew the bartenders and they knew me, and the cost of a beer usually just ended up being the pleasure of my company. Each trip saw the intake of at least four bottles of Budweiser and some delicious fried (though sometimes grilled) chicken concoction, a good deal accompanied by fries.  My most active form of exercise was the walk to and from my apartment, two avenues and two streets over. On evening’s that I swore off drinking, I would get phone calls from lonesome bartenders at around 2am and I would oblige them with a visit. I wasn’t so much of a couch potato as I was a bar snack.

 The week of New Year’s Eve came and went.  It was filled with similar activity, though not at the same establishment.  There was a karaoke night thrown in, several ill-advised binge drinking outings with visiting friends and New Year’s Eve party with plenty of food and beer and to boot.  On January 1^st, I took a sobering look at pictures from the evening before.  My face seemed a bit blubbery, though my demeanor was jovial.  I looked every bit the jolly fat man.  This was confirmed when I had the inclination to weigh myself.  “182 lbs! I’m five-foot-six. That cannot be healthy.”  Indeed, it was the most I had ever weighed.

 Taking a shower that day, I looked down at the bit of the pelvic region my growing stomach allowed me to see.  A small hump of flesh appeared, I feared it the beginning of my own “front-butt.”  Evasive action was taken.  I would join a gym.  And join I did.  What followed by an intense 5-day a week program consisting of little else than 60 minutes of cardio work, though it eventually gave way to some circuit training.  I wasn’t much in the way of muscle tone, but I think I certainly made a dent in the weight department.

 Consistently doing battle with the treadmill and elliptical machine all but alleviated that burgeoning misshapenness. I wouldn’t say I got thin, but I was a reasonable picture of health, probably knocking off twenty pounds.  2008’s unofficial slogan of “2008, lose some weight!” had been adhered to with nearly the best effort possible…and held steady for most of 2009. 

 Unfortunately, the Winter of 2009/10 had to set in accompanied by social activity which often meant beer and food; my gym membership having become too expensive in this time of recession, I had taken to running outdoors throughout the Summer and Autumn.  Only now I deemed it too cold to carry on with this regimen.  An uncomfortable tightness in my favorite pair of jeans ensued and during my daily shower ritual I could hear an imaginary menacing growl coming from just below my waistline, my own Na’vi girlfriend trying to gaze me straight in the eye and not-so-subtly whisper the words, “I see you.”

 Well, “Front Butt” I see you too, but it’s the spring, so I’ll see you around. I’m going for a run.