Weighed and Measured

My life took a wrong turn for me the other day, a melancholic turn, and it happened very quickly.  One minute I was happy in my skin, the next I’d been weighed and measured, and to my great surprise, found wanting.

There I stood, like an innocent lamb for the slaughter—shorn of even my undergarments and socks, a flimsy, paper gown hanging ignominiously from my slumping shoulders—facing the long arm of the weigh scale, its pendulous weights being moved remorselessly to the right by an unsympathetic nurse.

Another arm, this one perpendicular to the weigh bar, lay atop my head.

“No tiptoes!” the nurse said curtly.  “Heels down.” 

Undaunted, I raised my chin as high as I dared, and stretched my torso skyward, straining for every fraction of height.  I’m sure I heard my spine decompressing…ouch!

I sucked in my stomach when she wrapped a tape around my waist, and held my breath as the gown crinkled noisily against me.  I swear she took her time to read it, waiting to see if I’d have to let go.  Mercifully, she released me before I expired.

My efforts were to no avail, however.  The results spoke for themselves.  Well, not really; I had to ask for them.

“Okay, step down,” the nurse said.  “Sit up on the bed, the doctor will be in shortly.”

“What was I?” I asked, clambering up as directed, pressing the gown between my legs to keep from exposing my nether regions.  As if the nurse cared.  At my age, I’m not even sure why I did.

“Weight, seventy-nine kilos,” she said, placing the clipboard with my chart on a small table by the bed.  “Height, a hundred and seventy-three point seven centimetres.  Waist, ninety-one point four centimetres.”

“What’s that in pounds and inches?” I asked to her departing back.

“Don’t know,” she tossed over her shoulder.  “Don’t use those anymore.”

The doctor didn’t know, either, although she was much more forthcoming than the nurse.  “You’re a little above weight for your age,” she said, “and a tad too short for your weight.  But it’s the BMI we’re concerned with.”

“BMI?”

“Body-Mass Index.  It’s a measure of body fat, based on weight and height.  Ideally, you should fall somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five.”  She was busy typing who-knows-what into the computer on the examining-room table, its screen angled away from me.

“So what am I?” I asked.

“Let’s see,” she said.  “Hmm, slightly overweight.  Twenty-six point eight.  Nothing to worry about, but it would be good to get it inside the normal range.”

“I’m not fat!” I protested.  “I’m still wearing the pants I wore ten years ago.  Thirty-four-inch waist.”

She looked at me, not unkindly, perhaps wondering why anyone would still be wearing clothes from a decade ago.  “You can’t go by the sizes on your clothing,” she said.  “The manufacturers fudge the numbers, likely to make us all feel better.”

“Really?” I said.  That was news to me, discouraging news, until I realized that, no matter the number, my old pants still fit me.  “But they’re the same size they were…well, whenever I bought them.  I can still get into them.”  Even I could hear the tinge of desperation in my voice.

“I’m sure they do,” she said gently.  “But perhaps your BMI was high back then, too.  Or maybe you were taller.”

“Taller?” I repeated.  “You mean I might be shrinking?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said, rising from her chair.  “Gravity always wins, so most people shrink as they get older.”

“Older?” I repeated.  “Me?”

“Okay, lie back on the bed,” she said, “and let’s have a look at you.”

I must have looked alright, even for an old guy, because after twenty minutes of poking, pinching, and prodding, she bade me farewell.  As I dressed again in my familiar old clothes, the crinkly, paper gown gladly discarded, I fretted over the unfortunate turn my life had taken. 

As soon as I got home, I made a beeline for the computer to do the conversions—kilograms to pounds, centimetres to inches.  I figured the metric units were bigger than the imperial ones—as in one metre is longer than one yard—so my real numbers would probably be smaller.  I was dismayed by the results.

“A hundred and seventy-eight pounds!” I sputtered to my wife, disbelievingly.  “Five feet, nine inches!  Thirty-six-inch waist!  This is crazy!  I’m not that heavy!  I’m taller than that!  Their scales must be off.”

“As long as you feel good,” my wife said soothingly, “don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried,” I said, convincing neither of us.  “But these numbers can’t be right.  The doctor told me I was overweight, for crying out loud.  My BMI.”

“What was the number?”  My wife obviously knew what BMI meant.

“Umm, twenty-six point eight,” I said, referring to the scribbles I’d made on the back of my appointment card.  “I’m going to calculate it with the imperial numbers, see if it’s lower.”

It wasn’t, though.  I was overweight metrically and imperially, it seemed.  The handwriting was definitely on the wall.

In the Book of Daniel, chapter 5, there is a passage depicting a judgement visited upon King Belshazzar, where a spectral hand wrote words of condemnation on his palace wall.  Those words have been translated as:  You are weighed in the balance and are found wanting. 

And that’s exactly how I felt after my visit to the doctor’s office.  I’d been weighed and measured, and found wanting.  Wanting to be younger, wanting to be lighter, wanting to be taller, wanting to be thinner!

I tried to imagine how the poor old king must have felt when he saw the handwriting on that ancient wall, but our situations were quite different.  I told myself it had to have been worse for him.  He lost his kingdom, after all, and his very life.

All I have to lose is some weight.

_{© J. Bradley Burt 2023}