Sexy at Any Weight

It’s not a good week for my redhead.

First she had to deal with public humiliation, and then today she had to deal with private disappointment.

In our bathroom we have a digital scale. Pretty much every morning she gets on the scale as she is getting ready for her day.

This morning she got on the scale—as is her custom—but because she wanted to work in the yard she didn’t go ahead and shower. Her weight was what she expected it to be.

Then she went, gardened, weeded and then came in to cool off and shower. When she got to the bathroom, on a whim, she decided to weigh herself again. Don’t ask me why.

She had gained 8 pounds.

To a logical mind this doesn’t make sense. She hadn’t consumed enough liquids to gain 8 pounds, she hadn’t eaten ANYTHING.

Certainly it must have been a fluke. She got on the scales again: Now it was 10 pounds.

I heard a blood-curdling scream, the kind of scream reserved for a dropped baby, a decapitating car crash or a Wes Craven.

I ran to the bathroom, my heart racing, expecting a gaping hole and gushing blood, a “9-1…” dialed on my cell with my thumb poised nervously over the “1” button.

My redhead is in the bath, quiet tears running down her cheeks, stepping gently up and down onto the scale, reciting a series of weights—all within a pound or two of each other.

Her teary eyes turned to me: “I’ve gained EIGHT POUNDS today.”

“Honey, unless you just drank two gallons of water, there’s no way a person can gain eight pounds.”

“Just look,” she stepped on the scale. Sure enough, it read 1 _ _ (I got in trouble the last article where I gave her exact weight. Her weight is somewhere north of Calista Flockhart and south of Marylin Monroe. Otherwise, it’s just right.

But the scales were obviously wrong. There was no way my redhead would believe me. “I’m FAT!” She dissolved into a teary heap on the floor.

I took a look at the scale. “I’ll bet it’s just the battery.”

“How do you know?”

“Well honey, the only way to know for sure would be to put in a new battery.”

“DO IT NOW!” sounding a little like Lynda Blair.

“But honey, this takes one of those watch batteries, I’d have to go to Wal-Mart and pick one up….”

“NOW!”

I went.

When I returned she hadn’t moved, but she was looking at the scale and I thought I heard her whispering to it “How can you do this to me?”

I put in the battery. She weighed. Not only had she not GAINED weight, she was down a pound from this morning.

And I lived to see another day.