OK, it’s time for me to do something about this weight problem.

I was down as thin as I’ve been since college. That’s not too thin, but its bearable. As I went through my long unemployment problem, I just kept adding and adding pounds. My bathroom scales finally gave up and said, “One person at a time” when I tried to weigh.

I suddenly found pants that I used to joke and say, “I’d better be careful or I will have to wear those,” were now too tight on me.

I need to get back to exercising every day, and that means more than walking to the bathroom twice a day.

I need to play basketball, which I did daily while growing up. I was the star then, dribbling the ball on our driveway.

I made up one of my teammates, a guy named Pete Peterson, who was tall enough to be my team’s center. My other teammates were kids from my school. Sure, in real life they were better than I could ever be, but this was my fantasy world. In my world, I was the team’s leading scorer, the league’s leading scorer, and the guy the fans cheered for.

Certainly I was never showing good signs of mental health, but the exercise kept my weight down to manageable proportions. Sometimes I would be out there for hours at a time bouncing that ball, pretending I was a star athlete.

Now all these years later the goal we had nailed to a tree has been down for years. The slatted wooden frame I used as a backboard finally gave in to gravity. The remains of a metal goal I had put up in later years remains in the driveway, but the actual goal part of it has rusted off.

Of course, now I am grown myself and I can drive just a few miles down the road and use the county’s facilities. But I don’t.

So that’s the first step in losing weight. I will start exercising some every day.

I probably need to eat less fattening foods, but let’s take this one step at a time.

Maybe some day I’ll be back to my original weight: 8 pounds, 6 ounces.

That may be carrying it too far.