Humor Non-Fiction posted June 10, 2021 |
Instant Weight Loss: Two Takes
Scales of Injustice
by Elizabeth Emerald
On July 8, 1979--a date that shall live in infamy--I married Dick #1. I weighed 145 pounds at the time, forty pounds above my starting weight.
The gain was consequent to two years of binging, sans purging.
I gained the first twenty pounds in year one, during which torturous period I struggled as a student teacher in a fifth grade class of demons. On Saturdays and Sundays, I'd reward myself, for surviving hell week, with two quarts of ice cream (at each sitting) topped with a can of Hershey's syrup and half a jar of Jif, and accompanied by a twelve-pack of Little Debbie's oatmeal creme sandwiches.
I gained the second twenty pounds in year two, during which period of unemployment I learned that the parchment upon which was printed my Master's Degree in Education was too rough to be used for toilet paper. I figured I may as well pass the time indulging in my familiar gustatory hobby (see menu above).
I lost the forty pounds over the subsequent ten years, in four stages. The first twenty-five came off when I got a job and thus had eight fewer hours per day in which to stuff my face. The remaining fifteen pounds vanished, effortlessly, in three discrete stages; within a week of the birth of each of my children, I lost my pregnancy weight plus five pounds. (O, the irony!)
Meantime, Dick, who'd weighed 155 (a mere ten pounds more than I did) at the time of our marriage, steadily gained weight, in "sympathy" with each of my pregnancies (and continuing well into the post-partum period), topping off at 235 pounds by the time of our tenth anniversary.
Dick blamed his final thirty-pound gain on the doctor who'd performed his vasectomy. (!) To which dubious claim I snidely agreed that he should sue the sonuvabitch, six months hence, whilst in the meantime, refraining from the chips and M&Ms, just to rule out the infinitesimal possibility that his weight gain had been caused by the crap he pigged out on.
Determined to get back to his ideal weight ASAP, Dick adjusted the dial of the bathroom scale down by eighty pounds.
Unsettled at seeing my weight register as twenty-five pounds, I returned the dial to its proper position.
Upon which it got stuck.
Distressed upon seeing his weight shoot back up to 235, Dick determined to go on a "crash diet."
Thus, he hurled the bathroom scale down the basement stairs, after which he superfluously attacked it with a sledgehammer.
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