What is truth, you ask? Where is it to be found? One place knoweth your secret sins: The bathroom scales.
**********
They lie there, silent as death, watching you approach, trembling with trepidation. You know the verdict: Guilty.
You want to avoid them, to sluff off the error of your ways. You hate its brutal frankness. Criticism comes hard for you. The scales are pitiless. It is what it is, they say in digital numbers. You recoil at the revelation.
I know your terror, your reluctance to know the truth. Just yesterday I pulled out my alligator belts, the favorites, the vanity ones, the ones with my initials engraved on the gold buckles. They had all shrunk, shriveled up. Shrinkage happens with favorite things as you have experienced.
Why? Someone’s to blame. Someone’s always to blame. The alligator? I seek the scales for advice, knowing the result before I climb aboard.
Ours is digital, the latest technology. It’s connected to the computer. It monitors to the scruple of all miniscule changes in weight. Once it got inadvertently hooked to YouTube. It went viral. The phone started ringing.
Scales are like Baptist preachers. They bludgeon us with the truth and remembrance of all carnal sins. Perhaps scales were invented by a preacher, one who advocated abstinence of all things pleasurable as the absolute anchor of salvation.
I tiptoe in, look before I leap. It looks so innocent, like teenagers and dogs. It waits patiently for me to lay myself bare upon its throne of judgment. A still, small voice whispers in my head, “My son, sacrifice your pride on my altar, break up your hypocrisy and be rescued from your reprobate ways.”
Put yourself in this position. Do you want to say goodbye to pretense, to illusion and say hello to the harsh truth of reality? Do you want to face the cold, hard facts of the consequences of living an indolent lifestyle of ease? No. We want to cover up our self-indulgent gratifications, our excesses of an easy life.
But now it’s too late to turn back. I think of all the money invested in alligator belts and gold buckles. What, with diabetes running rampart, Medicare running out and my life running ragged, I’m convinced of the error of my ways. Charles Wesley sings in the distance, “…Calling, O sinner, come home….”
I take a deep breath and exhale. Someone, probably a Rotarian, once said that exhaling would eliminate at least two pounds. So I grit my teeth, hop on and close my eyes. Like skydiving, the fear is only overcome by making the jump.
In my mind images appear, images of Hostess Twinkies and Moon Pies, tasty treats with less gravity than lettuce. I envision plates of fried pork chops, surrounded by mounds of mashed potatoes and biscuits, biscuits dripping butter and cane syrup. Seraphim and cherubim with flaming swords stand guard, daring me to return.
Behind them is an apparition with horns and dressed in a red suit. It tempts me to taste my last supper. I’m tortured beyond comprehension.
The future passes before me in slow motion. I’m standing on the precipice of an abyss, a vast chasm that separates illusion from reality. I see a gaunt man with hollow eyes and a vacuous stare, a starving street survivor redeemed to a Vegan Paradise. I see a buffet table, hear euphoric spirits feasting to bacchanalian excess. Exiled outside, my growling stomach snacks on sugar-free Snickers.
Last year we modified our scales so as to pre-program our desired weight. If we came in under that weight, bells ring, whistles blow and John Phillip Sousa plays Stars and Stripes Forever while we join the throng Marching to Zion.
But if we went over, God forbid. Art Linkletter announced it with giant tubas blowing a flatulent dirge on our forced march through the hellish gates of the medical system. I wondered what I’d hear today.
I finally get the nerve to open my eyes. I stare into the Cyclops eye of the scales, the Final Arbiter of truth. It’s a sobering call to repentance. Its road is rocky, its way hard. I think of the camel squeezing through the eye of a needle, sort of like trying to squeeze into my jeans.
In the background I hear a still, small voice whispering, “My son, go and sin no more.” Ah redemption is sweet!
And so the drama continues, day after day, as millions tiptoe around their scales as if they were beds of hot coals, afraid of the truth.
The price of weight salvation is eternal vigilance. Remember, you backsliders, fat cells have long memories.
So hang in there, all ye who labor and are heavy laden. Truth is only an enemy to delusion. Oh, mercy!
Bud Hearn
January 25, 2019