Eat, Oh Slothful One, But I Reject Your Game of Freighted Adiposity
The news from medical researchers — at the Harvard Medical School, no less –that fat friends can make you fat certainly resonates with me. Reading that, I immediately thought of my bud Fat Luther.
At mid-morning, Fat Luther will pull a box of Fudgies from the freezer and press several on me. “Here, have three or four of these to get you through to lunch,” he will say. Then, two hours later, you should see the size of lunch.
No! I will not let those around me drag me into the sloth pit of too many calories. I will seize my adipose tissue destiny. Friends, acquaintances, fellow workers and family can fatten up on their own. Count me out.
Thank goodness for the power of the computer. I have more than 200 people in my electronic address book, organized via powerful database software. (Geek alert: MYSQL 5.12) . It’s not that difficult to come up with a system that rates the Adiposity Danger of each person.
The higher someone’s AD rating, the less time I will be around them. The people who fall in the AD’s upper quartile will be serious candidates to be added to the dreaded AD Shun list. May their bulk never darken my sky — or my door — again.
In a further clever twist to creating and maintaining my Adiposity Danger system, I will log the amount of time I spend with each person in my database. The system will applaud me with encouraging messages when I spend time my my thin friends. It will warn me, even angrily shout at me with many exclamation points (!!!!!!) if I spend too much time with the fatties.
(Note to the File: When time permits, include a boredom factor in the AD system. Those people who are fat and boring will get booted sooner than those who are just fat.)
Of course, anyone who has built a database system will tell you that the easy part is putting the software into place. The hard work is gathering the data.
For example, my significant other’s best friend from across the street, Jeanine, is in the kitchen at this very moment, gossiping and polishing off a double latte and a box of biscotti she brought from the bakery.
So, I’m going to saunter in the kitchen, clipboard in hand, and say, “Jeanine, how much do you weigh?”
She will, of course, quickly and eagerly reply, “Two hundred and forty pounds, Dear.”
Then, in the same spirit of cooperation, she will reveal how many calories she consumes per day, how many calories she expends with daily aerobic exercise, her blood glucose and triglyceride levels, her adipose tissue skin fold test reading, resting pulse and blood pressure and — just for data gathering thoroughness — her psychiatric self-assessment.
And so it will go, gathering the same data on all 200 of my contacts, as well as anyone new I add to my list. With lots of hard work, my system should be ready in early 2009.
Yes, Oh Slothful Ones. You will not drag me down to your level!