Other Signs
by Gwen Boswell
Like aging, signs regarding
our increased weight appear to be either end of
the spectrum, rather that anything in between.
Developing into a couch potato often slowly
creeps up on you and one night it may hit you
that the reason you have watched the same channel
for six hours straight, is not because of its
intellectual and/or artistic content, but because
you cannot heave yourself one metre across the
couch to grab the remote.
A more obvious sign could
be that you have a wardrobe full of clothes, but
only one outfit that you ‘feel you look good
in.’ The reason you look good in this outfit
is probably more to do with the fact it actually
fits you and with this particular outfit there is
little danger after you spending five minutes
doing up each individual button, that upon your
sneeze, a button flies off at about 80kms per
hour, pinging off various hard surfaces in your
bedroom like a ricocheted bullet. Further, one
morning when stepping as lightly as you can on to
your talking scales, it dumps the numeric type of
conversation it has had with you in the past and
engages your attention by blurting out, "Jesus,
Mary and Joseph!" Talking scale
manufacturers refer to this reaction by your
scales as ‘shock mode,’ and your scales
will never be same again, nor will you get a
refund.
Recognise the signs that
you are becoming boring. You may wish to
reconsider your great idea of the development of
a personal web page to include all your
holiday photos. Your best friends, who are
generally supportive of all of your barmy ideas
and even your mother and father, who love you
dearly, can only bare to see about three of your
wonky, blurred holiday snaps on your return from,
typically, shell collecting in Sheringham, so
what on earth makes you think the whole world
wants to see any of them, let alone all of them.
Try not to become too self-obsessed.
Note that you, and you alone, think it is cute
when your dog jumps up everyone that visits your
home to give a friendly doggie hello. You smile
on these occasions and say," Don’t
worry, he won’t bite you." You have
missed a sign here, as your friend’s wife in
her new designer white silk pants, cares less
about her skin and bones being broken than she
does about her new pants getting covered in dirty
great paw marks. She is not thinking your dog is
cute, she is thinking you are stupid and your dog
is stupid. She is also thinking your dog is an
ill-trained mongrel and wishes someone would
leave your back gate open one night.
Finally, at some point you
may wish to examine your drinking habits. If
during any related discussion, you find yourself
telling people that you are definitely a social
drinker and the only reason you drink three beers
in the first half an hour of getting home from
work, is due to your extreme thirst. The action
of drinking three beers in the given timeslot is
not a sign you are thirsty, it is a sign you are
becoming a drunk. There are countless statistics
to disprove your statement; humans drink water
when they are thirsty, they drink beer because
they like the effect. Also, thinking that the
glorious crimson of a glass of shiraz when
sitting next to your sunshine orange coloured
cornflakes is a wonderful contrast that cannot be
missed, is not a sign of your deep appreciation
of nature’s wonderful array of colours, it
is a further sign that you are becoming a drunk
and preventative action may be called for –
or, it’s a sign you need to buy a hip flask.
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