Justifiable Gluttony

Here are the cold hard facts, kids: sitting around all day causes one to gain weight. And sitting around all day eating the free candy readily available in your workplace is even worse. A lot of so-called experts blame this country's obesity epidemic on fatty convenience foods and increased portions, but I blame it on our occupational migration towards the service industries. We weren't so fat back when we were farmers and industrial laborers and members of the Irish mafia. That's because milking cows and gutting cows and running from the pigs burns a lot more calories than clicking a mouse.

I've been a member of the white collar workforce for about a year and half now, and for about a year and a half now I have known it was time to go on a diet (again). Until last Saturday, that is, when it suddenly hit me that I was wasting my time with carrot sticks (as if!) and I actually needed to GAIN weight. About 3,000 lbs. worth.

This epiphany occurred when I was attempting to turn left out of a shopping mall parking lot. The intersection is regulated by a stop light—a stop light that is activated by sensors buried in the street so that the stop light "knows" when people want to exit the shopping mall. I was the first in line of about six motorists waiting to exit the mall at this particular time. To our collective misfortune, I was riding the Vespa.

You see, the Vespa just wasn't heavy enough to set off the sensors in the pavement. Everyone realized this once we had waited through several lights where the traffic coming in the opposite direction got green lights and left turn signals galore, but we got nothing. Everyone let me know they realized this by honking and yelling at me. I inched up really far into the crosswalk and motioned for the driver in the Caddy behind me to do the same so he could set off the sensor and free us all; but, true to his octogenarian form, he refused to play Moses to our Nordstrom's exodus and stayed put. Eventually, I faked my best "Oh wait! I just remembered I need to go to Trader Joe's anyway!" look, turned right out of the parking lot, and took the long way home.

In the future, if anyone asks me to "take one for the team," I'm just going to say, "No thanks. Been there, done that, drove around the block." And if anyone asks me if I should really be eating 14 Sprinkles cupcakes in one sitting, I'll just explain that I'm working on my Vespa weight. It's like how nobody questions a linebacker for carbo-loading at the training table even though he appears to be one breadstick shy of a triple bypass: sometimes it's just acceptable to be really large. Given my experience this Saturday, I think we should add Vespa riders to the list.