A little while ago, I had another annual health check-up. You know the kind I mean—where they tell you to eat less and exercise more. I’ve heard that prescription so often I’m convinced it’s a recording.

The check-up began, as usual, by measuring my weight and height, normally a formality for me. I weigh in at 220 pounds, give or take a metric tonne, have for years, but my height was a surprise, in fact, a bit of a shock—5’6”. Four years ago it was 5’8”. Two years later, my height had dropped to 5’7”. Now it’s 5’6”?

The physician explained that this was normal, something about compression in the spine due to aging. Okay, no big deal, right? But the drop to 5’6” worried me and made me wonder. Suppose the process continues.

My expertise in physics came to the fore as I recalled that distance equals rate times time. Combining that with prodigious mathematical skills allowed me to calculate that I would disappear entirely in 132 years, give or take a millisecond.

But wait! That couldn’t be right. My weight holds steady at 220, so I can’t just vanish; that body mass must go somewhere. Well, I ask myself, where is it going at present, as my height declines?

It’s not going to my feet. My shoes still fit. It’s not going to my head. That’s fat enough already.

A look in the mirror provides the answer. My belly is expanding. So is my behind. If cannibals ever caught up with me, they’d have a fine rump roast. (There I go again—thinking about food.)

But I stray afield; what’s going to happen as my height shrinks but my weight holds steady? At some point, my current Apollo-like figure will become rotund. Worse, the effect will be exaggerated by my ridiculously stumpy legs.

Ann teases me about that. She is two inches shorter than me, yet has longer legs. Nature can be so cruel … and comical.

President Abraham Lincoln would understand. A reporter once asked lanky Lincoln how long a man’s legs should be. “They should reach,” he replied, “from his body to the ground.”

Maybe becoming fully rotund won’t be so bad. Instead of walking around on these undersized legs, I’d be able to roll from place to place, like a bowling ball, a very large bowling ball.

Where will this process of shrinking end up? I think the ball must flatten out until it eventually becomes a pancake. (Just can’t help thinking about food, can I?)

Hence, about a century from now, you’ll be able to recognize me as a pancake—a 220-pound pancake. Don’t bring syrup.