What's your beef?

Friends, it's all in the metabolism.  I never tire of telling people how, every day in high school as soon as detention was over, I would head up York Rd to the great Smetana's Deli, where I would enjoy a cold cut sub, chips and a Coke.  Eastern European delicatessen owners have always been fonts of knowledge and humor, and Joe and Gus, the genial Czech brothers who would hand out fake World Series tickets along with your sandwich, always had a joke or two for me to steal and repeat forever.

Then I'd hike up the road to Read's Drugstore, where I'd have an ice cream sundae and another soda.

Then I'd cut through Towson Plaza and hitchhike home to dinner with the family, and by the time I had finished what homework I was going to do, I'd be back in the kitchen, snacking on chips and pretzels and Hawaiian Punch.

I weighed 140 lbs at this time. I had to run around in the shower to get wet.  I couldn't drink through a straw, for fear of falling in. My pajamas only had one stripe. I was skinny.

Those days are over, obviously. It's all in the metabolism; as one gets older, the old calorie-burner slows down and leaves corpulence behind.

Which brings me to Molly Schuyler, all 120 lbs of her, a Nebraska native who lives in California now and went to Texas over the weekend for dinner, which consisted of  three steaks, three baked potatoes, three shrimp cocktails, three salads and three rolls, consumed at a restaurant called the Big Texan Steak House in Amarillo.

Snack time for Molly

The deal there is, if you can shove that much down your neck in an hour, it's free. Otherwise, you pay $72, tip not included.

Ms Schuyler is 35 now, and in 20 years, she will be 55, and I'm sure she won't be able to chow down like that. So she should enjoy it while she can!

PS: She started in on a fourth steak, but stopped.  Not because she was full, but because she was tired of eating steak.

There ya go.