Proverbs 21, Verse 4
"Pride,
lust,
and evil actions
are all
SINS."
---
CHIPPED WISDOM:
So, my allergist and I had a little talk today about my blood pressure and my weight. Sure, technically, he's not supposed to have much to do with either, but, considering I spoke openly with his predecessor about "Rushmore", bowties, and pros and cons of dating outside the Jewish faith, I guess this isn't too far a stretch. At least this is medical.
I won't bore you with a prattling discourse on my systolic and diastolic numbers, but let's just say they've been on the increase. They're not in stroke-range, and he politely refused to classify it as "hypertension", but he did click the ICD-9 (watch out, 9-- you're going the way of the fucking dinosaur!) code for "elevated blood pressure" on my entry in his fancy-prancy electronic medical record.
"Does it have one for "fat"?" I asked, leaning forward on the exam table to squint at his flatscreen monitor.
"Gee, I don't know," he said, moving his mouse around, "let's see." I love it when medical professionals humor me. He typed in "fat" in the e-medical record search.
"Well," he muttered, scrolling down the drop-box options, "we've got 'fat cells', 'fatty deposits'--"
"Oh! Click that," I said, "I've got loads of those bastards."
"Look," he said, "how old are you? 33? You're an old man."
"I know," I replied earnestly, "everything's going to shit."
He then proceeded to tell me that he is forty-seven and he's depressed because he's "got to carry these things" (reading glasses) around with him everywhere, and that he had a problem with his thyroid, and he started to say the word "colonoscopy", but he stopped himself.
"Thank you," I said, holding up my hand as he smiled.
"Look-- what am I going to tell you? 'Exercise more'? Who the hell has time for that? Especially you with a job and two little kids running around. See your primary care doctor-- follow up on the blood pressure." He reminded me that, when he first met me, I was taking police academy physical fitness tests, and drinking Muscle Milk or Anvil Juice or whatever the fuck it was to fatten up.
It wasn't successful-- the fattening up or the police thing.
Now, I don't need the help of any product you can find at GNC. It turns out that getting a desk-job, having twins, and steadily aging is the best way to gain weight. Now, to put things into a little perspective: I'm six foot tall and weigh 154 pounds. According to the C.D.C., which is never wrong, not even about Ebola being the funniest disease that ends in "a" since Trachoma, my Body Mass Index is 20.9, which is within "Normal" range.
But, is that enough? For a long, long time, pretty much ever since early adolescence into my early thirties I have been classified as "underweight" for my height. Now, that's not necessarily a good thing, but it's been part of my identity. It's part of what makes me funny (looking) on-stage. It's part of what gets laughs, and all I have to do is walk out into the lights. Or-- is it? Maybe I'm funny enough being "normal". Maybe I've been relying on my awkward height-to-weight ratio as a crutch. Maybe I don't need it.
Maybe I have an eating disorder. I wonder what the empty bowl that once housed approximately two dozen Cadbury mini-eggs would have to say about that. Good thing fucking Fiestaware can't talk.
I eat too much sugar.
My portions are big.
I love carbs.
Forgive me. Pardon me. Grant me atonement.
A few weeks ago, the Honeybaked Ham Company catered a lunch at the hospital. I missed it, but, the next day, there was a half loaf of heaven-scented bread in a plastic bag on the counter by the mailboxes in reception. I took two pieces back to my desk and, at 6:15am, after eating breakfast, I inhaled them as giddily and exuberantly as a full-fledged fat girl playing and splashing in an inflatable wading pool filled with ranch dressing and corn syrup.
And then I waited until normal business hours, and I called the Honeybaked Ham Company and asked if they sold their bread by the loaf to the general public.
"Um, yea," the guy said hurriedly. Knives and things clanked onto metal countertops. It sounded like a very busy morgue.
"Do you just sell one kind of bread-- I mean, I want to buy a specific kind of your bread."
"Uh-- yea, we sell white, wheat, rye-- just come in and you can buy whatever you want," he said and was clearly about to hang up.
"WAIT WAIT WAIT!" I begged hoarsely, "are you still there?"
He was still there.
"The bread I want-- I don't know what it's called, but it was at the hospital where I work. There was a catering. It was just sitting there-- the bread."
Pause.
"What kind of hospital is this?" he asked.
Pause.
"A psych hospital."
Duh.
"Oh, yeah-- we did a catering job there a couple weeks ago. You're talking about the Hawaiian Honey Bread."
"YES!" I screamed. That had to be it. Something so wonderful had to be called that. My mind went immediately to lyrics I had sung as John Wellington Wells in "The Sorcerer," where I lie to Dame Sangazure and tell her that I cannot love her because... I am ENGAGED....
To a maiden fair,
With bright brown hair,
And a sweet and simple smile,
Who waits for me,
By the sounding sea,
On a South Pacific isle.
I closed my eyes at my desk and imagined her; bronze-skinned, bare-breasted, almond eyes gazing at me with a sultry, desultory longing as her pristine island teeth and supple, moist lips lovingly land on a slice of that bread.
"Yeah," he said, "we sell that, too."
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