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Carver Communications - Index

Carver Communications - 7.1.08 - Index

By Cathey Meyer
Weighing In
Spring Break my freshman year in
college offered me my virgin snow ski
experience. Anyone who saw me skiing the
first day did not ask twice if I had ever skied
before, but when day two arrived, I held my
own down the slopes. The challenge of the
downhill dash offered me all the thrills a
young athlete desires with one heavy
exception: You had to provide your weight
for the ski rental.
My freshman year in college was
paid for through my talents as a power forward
for the women’s basketball team. I
played with a bevy of West Texas beauties—ranch
gals who rode horses into the
sunset, rustled cattle in the summer, had
long, flowing hair with legs to match and
just enough sun to keep them tan all year.
Not a fat chick in the group. No one ever
called me fat, I was just very healthy. When
my roommate, Sheila, offered to take us all
skiing in New Mexico for Spring Break, we
were in snow bunny heaven.
We spent the three weeks between
the end of the women’s basketball season
and the start of Spring Break working out
so when we hit the slopes, no one would be
too sore to continue skiing through the
week. With the workout prep came the post
workout food binge usually followed by a
trip to the local Dairy Queen for a preparatory
Blizzard treat. Workouts to prevent
sore muscles and working out to lose
weight are two DIFFERENT things. If
anyone had hinted I would have to provide
my actual weight at the ski rental counter in
three weeks, you can bet my Dairy Queen
Butterfinger Blizzard would have instantly
changed into a carrot smoothie.
Arriving at the ski rental counter
was pretty routine. You hand over your driver’s
license, collect your equipment and
hope someone will tell you how to put it all
together. Until you hear these words: “Is
your weight correct on your license?”
(Remember, this was 1979 and the state of
Texas still needed to know on which highways
all the fat people were creating pot
holes.) In a room getting smaller by the
moment, in a room full of skinny cowgirls,
July 1, 2008 REAL ESTATE NEWSLINE 7
in a reality check of what is more embarrassing—giving
the wrong weight and busting
your skies in half, or giving the correct
weight and creating an uncomfortable
silence in what is now a closet—fainting is
a definite possibility.
Naturally, my weight was not correct
on my license. As much as I wanted to
weigh 117 pounds, I had not been that thin
since the fifth grade. I literally ‘weighed’
my desire to ski, against my desire to continue
the lie that eliminated 40 pounds from
my delicate frame. The happy ending was
I gave my correct weight, received the set
of skies for husky heifers and my cowgirl
compadres never batted an eye.
Why should you care about my ski
weight from 1979? Because for decades, as
a less than frequent flyer, but a frequent
enough flyer to various points about the
globe, I have always been concerned about
the true weight of my fellow travelers.
How on earth did the airline figure out how
much girth was being lifted into the air
along with luggage, coffins, express mail,
extra fuel and other materials we are better
off not knowing are traveling with us? And
now my weight watcher friends, the airlines
will perfect their estimates—they are going
to require a weigh-in prior to a boarding
pass.
I provide this tidbit as a public service
announcement to my traveling compadres.
If you dismiss this as just another
paranoid nut case criticizing the travel
industry, then you must not mind stripping
for our finely trained TSA officers, purchasing
all your non-solid daily toiletry
items at your destination, exposing all your
vacation film, paying extra for any checked
bag and defending the metal plate in your
cranium each time you set off the x-ray
beeper.
We now have enough notice to
begin the ultimate travel diet. If ever you
had a reason to lose that spare tire, the
humiliation of this conversation should do
it. “Thank you for choosing _________
Airlines for your travel needs. We appreciate
your business as we know you have a
choice when flying and we appreciate your
confidence in us. Please remove small children
and pet carriers and leave everything
else on your body in place and step on the
scale. Please place the other foot on the
scale. Our scales show you weight 207
pounds. Your ticket covers any passenger
up to 150 pounds. Your credit card will
automatically be billed $5 per pound
beyond our estimate of what each passenger
should weigh. If you are underweight,
you will not be credited, but you will be eligible
for a two for one purchase of our delicious
$10 sample honey roasted peanuts.
“Please proceed to the friendly
lines of our TSA where you will now strip
yourself of all that excessive weight so we
can x-ray between your rolls of cellulite for
incendiary devices that might explode in
flight due to your frustration of paying
more for a two hour flight than you pay
each month for your mortgage. Please
squeeze your fat ___ in the anorexic seat
and enjoy your flight.”
Eat what you want, but if you have
flight plans in the near future, each bite will
cost you per poundage . . . .