I was looking for my shoes the other day and found them perched on the bathroom scale. Leaning over to retrieve them, I was struck with horror at what I saw. The scale had barely moved under their weight. Dropping to my hands and knees, I put on my glasses to discover the scale registered one-half ounce! I looked around me like someone who had just witnessed a murder and wondered if anyone else had seen it.
One-half ounce! All these years I have played a game with my doctor's scales. My instructions to his nurse are explicit. "Take off one pound for the jewelry, another pound for the fact that it is 2 p.m. and I weigh more after lunch, and two pounds for my shoes."I was half-sick as I raced to my closet and gathered up all the shoes I own. Shoes with heels would weigh more because there was more to them. They weighed less. Surely my knee-length leather boots would send the scale racing. They didn't. Even the running shoes registered nothing appreciable.
What's happened to shoes? Isn't it possible to get a good pair of heavy ones anymore? I expect car doors to be flimsy, but shoes! It's something I can't get out of my mind. If I'm wrong about shoes, I could be wrong about the weight of other bits of apparel when I weigh in.
Years ago, I went to Weight Watchers meetings, and you don't want to know what went on in the line while people were waiting to get weighed in. They stripped themselves down faster than a Mercedes left on a New York side street at 2 a.m. They took off watches and hair ornaments, pantyhose, rings and contact lenses. They spit out chewing gum and breath mints. They took braces off their teeth. They popped water pills and went to the bathroom seconds before they stepped onto the scale.
One woman was ecstatic because she had a filling about to fall out. In the peak of an Ohio winter, they wore shorts and sandals because they weighed less. One night I actually told the woman weighing me in to take off one-half pound because I was wearing my hair in a bun and it weighed more when compressed.
We had a little kitchen scale to measure our food, and I remember we were allowed 2 ounces of hamburger for a sandwich. A 2-ounce hamburger was like sucking on your finger after a paper cut. I can't believe that little mound of meat weighed more than my shoes.
I know what I have to do: Wear ski boots to my next physical.