Pound for Pound

Brie gets the biggest kick out of this story from years ago so this one's for her!

Her Majesty and I both had a doctor’s appointment the same morning: hers fifteen minutes before mine so we went in together.  She stepped on the scale and she had gained a couple of pounds but that wasn’t bad, considering prior to this she had lost almost forty.  She had her follow-up and then it was my turn to get weighed.  I was so busy yakking with the nurse that I didn’t pay any attention to what the scale said.  When we went back into the examining room, Kitty snuck a look at my chart and then whispered to me, “You weigh 338 pounds.”  “WHAT??!” I yelped.  “I most certainly do NOT weigh 338 pounds!”  “Yes you do.”  “No I don’t!”  “Yes you do; it says so right on the paper.”  “Girlie, I don’t know what number you were looking at, but if it said 338 it wasn’t my weight.”  To this she replied nonchalantly, “Maybe they were twos, maybe they were threes, and maybe they were fives.”  So she thought I weighed 558 pounds???

This isn’t the first time a child of mine has gotten my weight wrong.  Years ago Robin, Brie and I were weighing ourselves.  I was a little self-conscious about what I might weigh so I didn’t want anyone to see.  I thought I had shielded the number with my foot but Brie piped up, “Mom weighs 218!”  “I do not!”  “Yes you do.  I saw it!”  “No I don’t!”  Of course at the time maybe I did, or maybe I didn’t, but I didn’t need her little eight-year-old butt announcing it to the world, to the giggling delight of my sister!

Why it is that my family likes to make it seem like I’m totally disproportionate as a person?  I’m big-boned, five feet ten inches tall and I work out which doesn’t make me skinny but keeps me strong and healthy.  Yet if I do some laundry and hang the non-dryer items at my parents’ house (because I don’t have a clothesline where I live) my clothes get inspected like alien fallout!

For instance, about fifteen years ago I had a pair of sailor jeans that were trendy at the time (or maybe just to me).  I didn’t want to put them in the dryer so I hung them up on Marie's clothesline.  Along comes Clancy an hour later, looks out the window and starts laughing.  “Whose giant pants are those?” he chortled.  I glowered at him.  “They’re mine.  I don’t know what you’re laughing at because they’re a smaller size than yours!”  “Not by much!”

No matter what it is, they always act like I’m bigger than a sideshow attraction.  And please don’t let me hang up an item of intimate apparel!  I can hang it in the most secret place at Marie's, but someone will find it, hold it up and say, “Whose big granny grunts are these?” Seriously: no one makes you feel unsexier than your siblings!

Brie: you're welcome! Always at my expense...