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One of my first literary crushes was the late Nora Ephron. She was funny, wrote like a dream and was cute. To me, at least.

And so it was with some dismay that I read her collection of essays, "I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman."

If only, I thought, she had known me back when I was putting together my Fifty-Year Plan for Long-Term Neck Maintenance, she wouldn't feel bad about her neck.

That's right. I was thinking about how my neck would look in the 21st century back when you were watching The Brady Bunch. If you were even alive.

My long-term perspective on neck upkeep was prompted by Jabba the Hutt, the Star Wars character who bore more than a passing resemblance to Richard J. Daley, the long-time Mayor of Chicago whose neck melded into his pot belly shortly after the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Jabba was my nightmare-what I would look like if I didn't take care of my neck; a triple-chinned blob of a man, cast aside while hard-charging up-and-comers half my age blew by me on the expressway of life. I wasn't going to end up a flabby mound of blubber, dammit! Like William Faulkner, I would not only endure, I would prevail!

And so it is that I end up, midway through the sixth decade of my life, without a double chin (or "chin scrotum," as fitness freaks like to call them). From some angles. If the light is right. With the wind at my back. Unlike the guys I read about in The Wall Street Journal who pay $6,231 for face lifts (proper name, rhytidectomies), money they could be spending on booze if only they'd taken care of themselves.

How can you achieve the same semi-tough neck-with the approximate firmness of a trout's belly-at my advanced age? Simple-follow this E-Z Home Neck of Steel program, and you'll never feel bad about your neck.

Play High School Football. High school football is a great way to build neck muscles so that you end up at +60 years with very little flab on your neck. Or sometimes no neck at all. Consider Tommy Nobis, my role model when I was a budding linebacker. Tommy built his neck up to a robust 19.5″ circumference by daily neck exercises of the sort our coaches made us do; we would drop down on the ground in push-up position, but support the upper half of our bodies with our heads instead of our arms.

With this type of conditioning, we could use our heads as human battering rams, which led to some neck injuries but was a small price to pay for a neck that looked like an Ionic column. Hint: start forty-five years before you wish to avoid a flabby neck.

Whiplash: Whiplash is a great conditioning tool for the neck. The best way to acquire it is to be hit from behind by a car full of girls, which will cause their car to slam into your rear-end (I mean your car's rear-end). Your head will snap back, then bounce off the head rest.

When your car comes to a stop, the girls will surround you and apologize profusely, enveloping you in the scent of perfume while their long hair gently brushes your face and-I had a point back there, before the crash.

Oh yeah. Whiplash causes pain that can be alleviated by yoga, especially the cobra position, which also tones your neck muscles. Again, remember to start early-give yourself plenty of time, around five decades.

Buy Executive Health Briefs. In the late 70s ads began to appear in leading business publications for an expensive newsletter called "Executive Health Briefs." For an exorbitant annual subscription price, you would receive a weekly collection of health tips that would keep you trim so that when you discarded your first wife in an expensive divorce you could acquire an aerobics instructor who shortened her name to a diminutive containing the letter "i" just so she could dot it with a smiley face.

As a come-on, the publisher offered a free copy of "How to Avoid a Double-Chin" to new subscribers. In a risky arbitrage move, I signed up for Executive Health Briefs, then as soon as I'd received the Double-Chin teaser, I canceled my subscription. After all, I couldn't afford to spend what little beer money I had on a magazine whose price point was set for six-figure CEOs!

But many years later I refer to that collection of exercises, which cost me $3 (adjusted for inflation, $1.2 billion). I am now happy to share key double-chin fighting exercises with you-free--because that's the Way of the Internet.

1. Interlace fingers across forehead. Bow your head forward until your chin touches your navel. Dig down, remove belly button lint, resurface. Repeat six times.

2. Turn your head towards and then over your left shoulder. Place chin on left shoulder blade, scratch patch of dry skin that you can't reach using your right arm. Return to original position, and repeat over right shoulder. If neck becomes stuck behind shoulder, call Fire Department.

3. Place palms against side of head. Press until lymph nodes in head pop, sending colorless liquid streaming out ears. Repeat until neck is drained of fluid. Adjourn to singles bar to receive admiring compliments from people two decades younger than you who would like to inherit your estate.

- Con Chapman

Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works include The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, 10 published plays and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn (Joshua Tree Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor.