Real men don't lift weights

I lift weights on a fairly regular basis.
I'm not proud of it, but it was introduced to me many years ago and it has become a part of my life.
I like the challenge of it, first and foremost, as well as the time spent with the fellows.
Granted, I don't enjoy looking like a weakling--that certainly plays a role.
All that being said, I strongly believe that real men don't lift weights.
Real men are strong, physically, because they actually function in jobs that require physical labor.
Call it functional fitness.
(An aside: I remember some years back playing flag football in the YMCA League with a bunch of my friends and going up against men in their forties and fifties--yeah, they still play at that age.Those guys, many of them, have what we call "old man strength" from years of working with their hands. Thankfully, my position was cornerback; I did not have to go into the trenches with the grizzled ones.)
Guys who lay bricks are building walls that will eventually come together to form someone's home; the men who toiled in the outdoors to build the railroads opened up the west so Americans could manifest their destinies.
Me, I drop a bar on my chest and try to push it back up.
That will come in really handy if and when I get overcome by a vending machine.
I remember a couple years ago when I first started working at the Journal as a writer, Bill Khan told me about his attitude toward other writers who like to complain about their jobs.
"It's not like we're out in the hot summer sun laying bricks all day," he said.
He's right.
And the more I think about it, the more inclined I am to believe that lifting weights is one way of playing pretend.
Maybe I can fool someone into thinking that I'm a real man!
And if you ask Bill, you'll find out that real men are runners, any way.