Everyone who has ever lifted weights for more than a month has a muscle that he considers to be his own. This is the case whether you are pathetically weak or so ripped that occasionally you injure your trapezius while dressing. My muscle is the triceps, or ole trusty t as I like to call him. There is no particular reason for this muscle to be any more developed than my other muscles, but for some reason it is. I suspect this is an evolutionary advantage passed down from my forebears who were perhaps particularly adroit at hanging backwards off the edge of cliffs after the mastadons plummeted to their deaths below. I'm not really certain, all I know is that I consider the tricep my muscle, and that I am not alone in my particular muscle affinity.

Lately Tardio and I have been the old dudes working out at the Vanderbilt student rec center. Tardio's muscle is the pectoral (or chest for those of you who are complete idiots). Lately he has loudly proclaimed himself to be on, "The quest for 300." Whenever he says, "I'm on the quest for 300," people pay even less attention to us than they already were. I am comparitively weak on the bench, in fact, Tardio should really not even be sharing the bench with me as after every set we move the equivalent of several sorority girls back to the weight rack for me to complete my sets. In some countries, the fact that Tardio's bench is approaching 50% greater than my own would mean that I am legally obligated to be his serf. Thankfully America is a serf-free country (at least for legal citizens). But I say all this, to point out that Tardio's muscle is the chest. Here are my other friends and their muscles.

My college roommate Krishna- the bicep. For most of college Krishna and I went to the gym to look at girls and pretend we belonged in the free weight room. Of course after a month at GW we did belong in the free weight room because George Washington might have the sorriest collection of male specimens of any college in the United States. Seriously, there were like five legitimate athletes in the entire undergrad population of 8k. And Krishna was almost one of them based upon his freakish bicep strength. It was uncanny. Put the bicep to work and he turned into Schwartzeneggar pre-Terminator. After a while, I noticed the cause of this strength, a peculiar circular vein that ran across the bicep and became engorged (has anyone ever used the word engorged outside of a romance novel before?) when he exerted any effort whatsoever. Later, with uncanny scientific reasoning, I decided this bicep muscle was an Indian evolutionary advantage. For all of med school, I pestered Krishna to make this theory the basis for his medical school thesis. Sadly, he demurred. Of course, I have never met any other Indian men with this evolutionary-advantaged circular bicep vein, but this has never dissuaded me from making the argument. Regardless, Krishna's muscle was the bicep.

Pictured: Krishna. Not pictured: the Indian evolutionary advantaged bicep

Tardio's highschool teammate who I do not know- shoulders. After a few moments explaining my musle theory, Tardio nodded knowingly. "One guy on my high school football team was the shoulders," he said, pausing between sets, "because he had huge shoulders." I nodded and then Tardio nodded. It was as if he had just unearthed the Rosetta stone. "One whole summer when we'd work out, he would just do shrugs all day long," Tardio said, "When you asked him what the hell he was doing, he would just say, 'Shoulders.' By the end of the summer his shoulders were just huge." Based on this story, I feel comfortable with his muscle being shoulders even though I have no idea who he is.

My other college roommate Shekhar- the calf. Shekhar has previously been discussed for such seminal issues as his contention that birds did not have blood (link here), drunk dialing duel (link here) and being a bad Indian because he was only an aspiring doctor as opposed to an actual doctor (link here). During college, Shekhar purchased strength shoes and began working out with them in the GW gym. In so doing, I believe he became the first non-team member of any basketball team to wear strength shoes. Shortly he became Jimmy from Seinfeld brought to life (and minus the third person references). Seriously, you haven't seen pick-up basketball devotion like this before. Shekhar's team would lose and while he waited for a subsequent game to finish he would put on his strength shoes and work out his calves. Coincidentally, this decreased his number of college sexual partners by approximately 75%...but man did he have great calves.

Shekhar's strength shoes

The inner thigh girl from George Washington's Smith Center cira 2000- the inner thigh. I am going to call her the inner thigh girl because I don't legitimately know her name. (I once overheard her name in a conversation with another girl, otherwise, I would know nothing of her except her profound innner thigh strength.) She was middle-eastern and ridiculously attractive and sometimes we would linger in the Nautilus room to watch her smash out reps on the adductor machine. When she finished a set, the floor would almost shake as she released her inner thighs from the pad. For a time Krishna and I considered expanding my theory of Indian bicep superiority to the middle eastern theory of inner thigh superiority. Then we decided it was too hard to see most middle eastern women on the adductor-abductor machine. Presumably because inner-thigh workouts are disfavored in many middle eastern countries. In fact it is a little known fact that the Taliban came to power spurred by outrage over the shipping of the first adductor machine to Afghanistan. This was before the war on terror began. Now, I feel somewhat comfortable sharing this secret theory because it could be of integral importance when bomb patdowns are conducted. Namely, don't skimp on the patdown of the inner thigh area. There could be a lot of C-4 held up there if my experience at GW is indicative of anything at all. Let's just say if anyone tried to rape this girl from GW, she'd be driving him to the hospital. Basically, the inner thigh muscle belonged to the inner thigh girl from GW.

This is not, I repeat, not the middle-eastern adductor inner-thigh expert

Desperate Housewive's Jamie Denton (the plumber)- the eyebrow muscle. I believe this muscle has single-handedly made Denton a famous actor. Next time you watch Desperate Housewives watch how often, Denton quizzically raises his eyebrow. The raised eyebrow conveys every deep emotion his plumber character is required to demonstrate, confusion, doubt, sincerity, sneakiness, snarkiness, basically any -ity or -ness.

"By the power of my eyebrows, I command you to lie down."

Also, and this might qualify as the most random celebrity connection ever featured on Deadlyhippos, Jamie Denton is from my hometown of Goodlettsville, Tennessee and his mother, Wisty Denton, was my Baptist Sunday School teacher for like five years. (I think she kept following me in Sunday School classes because I was such in incorrigible sinner). She was a great Sunday School teacher although I am saddened to say that the eyebrow was not her muscle.

Like this...but even kinder

I've exhausted pretty much every person whose muscle I know off the top of my head. Share your own abnormal muscle strength with us all, and even more importantly do your best to analyze why you have achieved such evolutionary superiority in one muscle while remaining so futile in all others. Also watch out for middle eastern women's inner thigh muscles.

________________________