Eleanor Grace

Among the dozens of lies my father told the D and me about his life growing up on the farm was the one about the boy who would lift a baby cow over his head every day. The child grew stronger in proportion to the cow’s weekly weight gain and by the time his bovine pet reached adulthood the boy could lift all 1200lbs over his head. Eventually, however, the cow got too heavy and the boy’s father had it slaughtered in the hopes that the protein, growth hormones and steroids that he’d fed the cow would be passed on to his son. It worked and that little boy grew up to be the actor who played Roy Biggins on the TV show Wings and one of the strongest humans in Hollywood.

Obviously, every part of that story was made up either by me or my father, some to screw with you but most to screw with me. Baby cows gain weight entirely too quickly for even the strongest boy to train with them. The threshold at which you could pick up a whole cow would be reached fairly quickly – for most folks it would be about, well, one day since they come out weighing about 100lbs. Meloni could probably go for a few weeks but even he would give up around 900lbs.



However, a human calf is another matter. Even those really fat babies from the Maury Povich show only get to be about 60lbs after 2 years. Interesting.



I have recently secured access to a 7lb 6oz baby girl and wish to try an experiment. The first phase begins tonight and should continue another 18 years or until weird Uncle Nabob isn’t allowed to come over and lift a teenage girl over his old man head.