Her name was Shiloh Men

dream.

If that stupid coach hadn't cut us from our high school football team, we'd have made quarterback, we'd have played in college, we'd have played professional ball, we'd have married a cat-eyed model named Shiloh.

If we hadn't gotten married, and then the kids, that Harley in the garage might not be something we ride on Sundays when the weather is good. Instead, we'd be thundering across the plains, scruffy but handsome, dressed head-to-toe in leather, held tightly from behind by a cateyed girl named Shiloh.

Or, instead of being a warehouse manager for a medical supply company, we'd be thundering across the plains in a big rig, hauling a load of adult diapers to Dodge City, Queen of the Cowtowns. Waiting for us at the next truck stop would be a cat-eyed waitress named Shiloh.

It gets us through the days at the warehouse.

Women dream, too, but no sane man wants to know his wife's dreams of glory and romance. Also, you can tell your wife about the football dream, the biker dream and the long- haul trucker dream, but it's best to leave Shiloh out of the story. “Tell me your dreams, and I'll tell you mine” is always a bad trade.

Last January, at the age of 64, I joined a gym. My wife, who doesn't know about Shiloh, read a study claiming that weight training is the “fountain of youth” as we get older. She's a good deal younger than I am, a small woman with arms like pencils, but she joined a gym, so I had to join a gym.

I used to go to boxing gyms when I was younger. I never got very good, but I liked it, and I learned to hit and be hit. I quit in my early 40s, when I'd slowed down enough that I could be hit too often, even if I was sparring with the biggest Egg McMuffin in the gym.

I got married. I began to do laundry as a sport, and I emptied the litter box the way Jesse James would empty a litter box.

We all dream. But at 64, I knew better than to go back to a boxing gym. Guys my age shouldn't try to excel at any sport involving guys with teardrop tattoos under their eyes.

So, I joined what I call a “gym for everyone,” which means there is no boxing ring and no serious weightlifters, and the police never come in looking for anyone.

Everything in the gym is sheathed in colorful plastic, so the place looks like the Lego room at a preschool, and it is just about as harmless.

There are some young guys with muscles, but not flashy muscles, quiet muscles, muscles in good taste, and there's a trio of young girls whose matching T-shirts indicate they are high school cheerleaders and some people who are rehabbing from an injury or a surgery and a number of well-advised middle-aged people who look like they think kale is food.

And unless we come in together, we don't talk to each other. There is no “sport” content to what we do. Working out on one of the brightly colored weight machines has all the competitive romance of working on a loading dock.

I've been at it for three months now, and I've increased the weight on some of the machines I use, and I feel a little bit looser when I move, like my joints have been oiled.

It's good, I guess. It's the Fountain of Youth, and I'm interested in living with my wife for as long as possible. I'm very proud that my wife sent me to a gym knowing it would make me live longer. Also, I have a magnificently healthy cat named Jack. He's only 6, and if he outlived me, he'd never understand why I was gone.

But if I'm ever in the gym and I meet a cat-eyed woman named Shiloh, I'm slipping out the back door because Shiloh remembers when I didn't give a damn if I lived to be 30, and I don't want her to see me this way.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www. creators.com. Dion’s latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called “Devil’s Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America.” It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.