I was able to attend a few of the St. John High School football and basketball games this past year. The students played hard as the cheerleaders tried to get the crowd behind their team. I have to admit that I wasn't always watching the game as much because of one person, the Tiger mascot.
The Tiger mascot was very entertaining and had me laughing out loud at some of the antics that he/she was doing. We all did or attempted to do cartwheels when we were young but if you didn't have the skill and balance, it turned out to be a really bad somersault.
I watched our Tiger mascot do a cartwheel at the girls sub-state basketball game. Here we have a fuzzy costume with paws, an oversize head and long tail. You want to talk about skill and balance, our Tiger mascot did it perfectly.
Truck drivers have a Commercial Driver License (CDL). We are required to carry a medical card with our license at all time. Every two years we go to a clinic and get a physical. They have been fairly easy to pass if your blood pressure was normal and you were not diabetic. The easy physical is about to come to an end.
As I write this, there are a new set of rules for our physical that are in court. One of these rules is that you can't have over 30 percent body fat. According to the chart, a man that is five feet, nine inches tall and weighs 205 pounds would be consider obese and would have 33percent body fat. It has been predicted that between 25 percent to 50 percent of all drivers will be disqualified to drive.
I observed a very large driver take almost a half of an hour just to get in his truck. He put one foot on the step and was out of breath. He managed to get the other foot up on the step and then held on until he could move the other foot. He had to have the strongest arms since he spent most of his time hanging on the side of the truck.
At the larger truck stops, we do have handicap truck parking spaces. Most of the ones I have seen that use them, have a handicap parking sticker because of their weight.
One of these days, the government will have me back in shape and fit as a Tiger. When that day comes, I will challenge our Tiger mascot to a cartwheel. The only demand I will make is that we do it at a football game. I may be crazy but I'm not stupid, the ambulance is only 50 feet away.
Ron Moore is a professional truck driver and contributing columnist
