Monday, March 06, 2006

Addendum to Pony's update; an aside

Several months ago, while waiting for the bill for our late Annie's visit, I couldn't help but overhear the girl processing it as she was talking to another behind the counter. "My husband says I'm getting fat!" she said to her co-worker.

So, before I go any further, know I'm old enough to be this girl's father. Or maybe, just maybe, old enough to be her grandfather--almost at least.

But what this young, attractive, woman revealed to her behind-the-counter partner really upset me. I couldn't let it pass. I wondered what great specimen of "machoman" her husband must be because this woman was in no-way fat. And at the thought of the guilt being laid on her, I couldn't help but step in.

I don't remember my exact words, but I told her something like, "You are no-way fat!" I said astonishingly. She not only accepted what I'd said, she appreciated it.

Well, back today, back to the vet clinic, back to that same crew behind the reception counter, my wife and I overheard this same woman talking about the "stress" in her life. Apparently, she's been confiding in someone, personally or professionally. And that's sad, because maybe the only extra weight on her is on her back, i.e., her perfect husband.

But that is not the point of this anecdote. The point is a conversation my wife and I overheard from these workers talking about the new local law that mandates the implanting of ID chips in all our pets recently adopted as we waited in the reception area for the results of Pony's X-rays. The "chipping" of animals quickly diverted from animals to boyfriends and husbands. I wonder why?

Our "fat" receptionist was advocating chips for all men, especially husbands. A simple, hand-held scanner could be used to gain insights into any man by a subtle pat on the shoulder, rub on the back. "Marital Status: M-married, S-single, D-divorced, L-lying." Other information might reveal things like , "Divorced twice, paying alimony to two ex-wives and support for 3 kids."
My wife couldn't resist jumping in.

It was funny, it was a lot of laughs. I finally remarked that I would probably blog something about this. But I felt privileged to partake in sexism from the other side. To insights from a feminine viewpoint.

As the laughing died down, the wife with the stress from her weighty husband said as some small concession, "We could even implant females too." Horrified at the very thought of further privacy invasions, I nodded reluctantly in false approval.

22 comments:

enigma4ever said...

Hopefully they can plant a chip in her husbands ass- that reads DUMASS...

( okay totally rude...sorry)

great story...thanks...

(((( ))))'s to you, missus and pony.... ( those are hugs)

Anonymous said...

Re: ID chip implants ... oh, they're coming alright, almost here, get ready. On Democracy Now a few days ago, a woman gave alot of scary details for RFID, which will be integrated into driver's licenses. To track your every move, purchase, even how long it takes you to consume something you purchased. Check her story out at spychips.com

And "fat"??? Oprah tells us men like a little fat "as long as the fat is in the shape of a woman". The vet-girl should really be questioning her husband's manliness if he's looking for a stick-skeleton. Unless he's just a mean bastard who gets off on finding an insecure person's weakness & exploiting it. Either way, not good life companion material (she should get a dog). D.K.

Anonymous said...

right on, D.K., on both counts!

fortunately, since I believe that quantum physics does apply to the (relatively) large as well as the very small, I believe that some enterprising, anarchic, electronic wiz will think up a way to bypass or confound the infernal use of such devices, and merely by thinking about it, the appropriate cancelling good "particle" to the evil "particle" of this application of RFID technology will come into being...

and, in regards to perceptions of beauty amomg men and women, the micro-exhange that dada relates is a sad commentary on the effect that commercial media has on our society...one gets the message that youth and beauty are all that matters, conveniently forgetting that we all get old; our skin wrinkles, men get pot-bellied, flabby and bald, women's breasts and buttocks sag and all that's left in the end is the beauty of the mind...the brain, after all, is indeed the largest sex organ on the body...

Anonymous said...

bless you maineiac for that last remark. The internet has really brought home to me that inner beauty, making good use of that space between your ears, is a quality that lasts forever. Well, that & getting older myself & finally realizing my happiness cannot be provided by others, it must come from within. Kind of like the situation the iraqi's find themselves in today thanks to bush trying to shove his version of happiness down their throats with a gun.

But re your quantum physics application, I'm thinking more along the lines of whatever the concept is called that posits everything breaks down over time, complicated things eventually become more uncomplicated as the universe continues to age & disperse. Something like "universal ennui" ?? Ouch, that chip-implant hurt my head. D.K.

enigma4ever said...

the brain is the Only organ that defies gravity...
and is the sexiest anyways...

( and thanks for reminding us of that little fact Maine Freind..)

Dada said...

maineiac: Yeh, such a shame--the trips this throw-away society places on everyone. The girl behind the counter at the vets, mid-twenties, very pretty woman, entering the prime of life and yet she has all these stresses and feels fat (how many, thanks to her husband?). It's
so very sad.

As you say, "all that's left in the end is the beauty of the mind...the brain, after all, is indeed the largest sex organ on the body..."

Ditto Maineiac. That's why I never fail to take mine with me everywhere I go. (???)

Dada said...

D.K. When in public, I'm liable to talk to anyone, given the least little provocation. But several months ago, I had the most beautiful experience. And as Maineiac reminds, I had my brain with me.

I was in the check out line at the grocery store. Watching the checker with the customer ahead of me, I could see she was very weary. She looked like she was dying for the end of her shift to arrive. That was enough to stimulate me to conversation.

She was an older woman, close to Dada's age. An she still carried the facial lines and curves belying the hidden beauty of her youth difficult to conceal.

We made small talk as she scanned each item tediously until I noticed a tiny pin on her store vest. It was the Eiffel Tower. I had to inquire if, like Dada, she was of French decent perhaps. She wasn't.

The Eiffel Tower pin, she told me, was a momento of a trip she'd made long, long ago to Paris.

That was the trigger that began the transformation of this exhausted, foggy eyed woman into a beautiful girl in her teens again. For she had been to France, origin of my heritage, but a place I will likely never see. She still spoke a little French.

Paris for her as a teenager had been wonderful as I watched the color return to her cheeks, and I detected a new twinkle in her beautiful eyes.

I listened in envy, trying to imagine the images she painted of what the City of Lights was like for an 18 year old. I told her that must have only been a few years ago, watching her grow younger as she spoke. She scolded me for lying as I assured her I wasn't.

We visited for an hour and a half in those 2-3 minutes as she time traveled back thru 40 years, taking me with her to places I can only imagine. But from the smile and glow she had rediscovered, I knew the remainder of her shift would pass a little faster; would be a little more effortless.

In all the interceding months since that 'trip to France', I have never seen her again. I like to think that was her last day on the job. That maybe she vanished into her past and is living perhaps on the left bank of the Seine. And if she is, I hope just one time she'll remember back to her future, as a grocery store checker, and drink a glass of wine to a customer who, during a weary shift, took her back there over 40 years ago.

Anonymous said...

nice story, dada, told straight from the heart...so you have a french heritage, as do I, my mother is descended from the Acadian French who were kicked out of their little paradise on the Bay of Fundy in 1755 by the British...an unusual instance of ethnic cleansing practiced on white people...

D.K., that would be "entropy", the 3rd(?)law of thermodynamics...

I am recently amazed to discover that my brain seems to have survived, relatively intact, even though I tried for most of my life to pickle it and obscure it with a haze of smoke (and I don't mean tobacco!)...all I had to do to make this discovery was to stop abusing it...

Dada said...

e4e: I think it's the Second Law of Thermalundewear. I only know this because--as another illustration of synchronicity--I relearned this last eve while reading in "The Party's Over: Oil War and the Fate of Industrial Societies"

As for my French heritage, my grandmother was from Alsace-Lorraine (? sp), grandfather, Melmac. (Oh, wait, isn't that where ALF was from?)

Maybe I'm a bit confused. I'll have to check on that, maybe while I'm looking for the Bay of Fundy. (Is that like short for fundamentalist?)

Anonymous said...

That was a great story, dada. Break the mirrors & we are all young again. You know, I'm forming a picture of you all which you'll probably laugh at, but nevertheless ...

I'm seeing maineiac (Acadian Hillbilly) somewhere between Daniel Lanois & Doug Kershaw, flames flying out of his fiddle.

Dada's like Poseidon (Neptune) rising out of the ocean flinging tridents at all the egregious plagues of mankind. Gazing upon tyrants, would-be monkey kings & their lackeys, all eventually succumb to his spears.

I see Enigma as Boadicca, last of the Brit Celtic Warrior Queens, who led her tribes into battle in small chariots with her mass of red hair flying in the wind. The Romans would regret inciting her wrath.

Me with my Scots-Irish-Anglo-Danish ancestry, I see somewhere between Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I and Maureen Sullivan in The Quiet Man, with a dash of Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter.

OK, don't laugh too hard, and don't destroy my vision too quickly! D.K.

Anonymous said...

here's a quick Acadian history from Wikipedia...my matriarchal ancestors beat feet for the deep woods of Northern Maine, where they stubbornly kept a French-speaking enclave until the 1930's, when the children were forced to learn and speak English...

they were a fiercely independent people who refused to fight in England's wars and pissed off the Puritans in Boston by being Catholic and prosperous without working real hard at it...you know...lazy sinners with land...

Anonymous said...

haha, D.K., "pop" goes the balloon...

put a pair of glasses on Dada and you've got me...and the only thing I can play is the stereo...

I like your characterizations, though, they made me smile...a topper to another fine day!

enigma4ever said...

Wow DK....you gave us all such wondeful visual /virtual bodies....sigh...I get to have Chariots....and masses of Flaming Hair and I get to piss off the Romans- I love this....
( my heritage is less dignified, Scottish Irish and Appalacian- Coal Mining Country)

DK: Kate Hepburn...yup...
Dada: Posiedon yup...
and Maine Friend: I think she gave you a pretty good image...

Dada...I loved the story, French gal that you gave a smile...

Anonymous said...

Pissing off Puritans? Acadians sound like my kind of people, unless you HAVE to speak French (I'm hopeless). Didn't some of them go down to LA & are now known as Cajuns, or have I mixed that up? And I never said you PLAYED the fiddle, maineiac. There are many kinds of flames. D.K.

Dada said...

Wow D.K. I don't know about the other two, but the Poseidon was 'nail on the head' dead right! Incredible. And I'm sure yourself as "Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I and Maureen Sullivan in The Quiet Man, with a dash of Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter" was right on too.

So, you're batting 500 AT LEAST. In baseball, that'll get you in the Hall of Fame.

Dada said...

First, my apologies. I'm a tad dingy this eve. It may be the reduced sleeping hours due to Pony's condition. But I meant to address that earlier post to you Maineiac, not e4e re thermodynmaics.

BTW, Po' continues to ween off her meds, but I'm concerned there's something goin on with her we have no idea of. I'm very concerned about her weight loss despite a decent appetite. And her overall demeanor is one of a dog who is out of her groove. We shall see.

Also, thanks for the Acadian history link. You speak any French Maineiac?

Dada said...

D.K. (Ah, about the Poseidon thing, about being dead on? I was only kidding. Kidding borne of modesty, but thank you, I loved it.)

BTW, off topic....but after reading this month's Consumer Repts on hybrids, well, I guess I'm not as keen anymore.

Anonymous said...

Ah c'mon, you wouldn't enjoy flinging tridents, dada? And you notice the women I named for myself are all beautiful or smart, or in the case of Kate Hepburn, both? ha,ha,ha,ha (allow me to dry my eyes). Oh & hybrids? My sister looked them over & came home with a Hyundai sedan instead. About $15K, excellent warranty, great MPG. Only mistake I think she made was going for a stick-shift because it will make her trips to hilly San Francisco quite harrowing. D.K.

Anonymous said...

Dada, you mentioned Pony losing weight despite good appetite? There's a product you can get at Petco or online from entirelypets.com called "Missing Link". We used it at a couple points in our dogs lives, after surgery for one, as a geriatric tonic for another, to provide those wierd little nutrients that might be missing & causing health problems. You just sprinkle it on dog food. I've been meaning to pick some up for my old Lab to see if it'll help her digestive problems. You can read about it online, might be worth a try. D.K.

enigma4ever said...

I know you are going to laugh at me- but I promise that the vanilla gelatto works like a charm, and it really helps heal the gut after meds...and it has at HUGE fat content that mught help her gain back weight- and it also has protein...( and it worked great when my bassat lost weight...) please give it a try...the nursey would never stir you wrong..promise.

Anonymous said...

dada, have you considered the possibility of diabetes in "Pony"...that might account for the weight loss and vomiting?...I think there are painful side effects as well??? (necropsy(?) in the limbs of humans)

my dear feline who was kept alive too long was diagnosed as diabetic about a year after her run-in with a predator at the age of 13...she could not completely heal and lost weight even though she ate like a horse...once the diagnosis was made and insulin prescribed she healed and hung on to the ripe old age of 19...

nope, can't speak more than a few phrases in French...heard the language spoken often at family get-togethers, but I can't get past that "translator" in my brain...can't think in the language, which is a requirement for fluency...immersion would probably do the trick, I noticed that the translator was faster after a week spent in Quebec City...gotta make the effort to speak French there, you often get "the look" from people when you babble at them in English...

Dada said...

D.K.
e4e
Maineiac

Thank you all for the suggestions. After my wife awoke I shared your ideas with her, D.K. and e4e. (Yours came in later, Maineiac.) She carefully wrote them down. (Oh, and e4e, I wasn't sure what the heck vanilla gelatto was, but she explained it to me.) Pony is on her very own 1/2 gal. of ice cream I bought her yesterday, but gelatto may be her next venture after finishing that. Wife also wrote down "Missing Link", D.K. Thanks again.

As for the possibility of diabetes Maineiac: This is something to check at our next appt. with the vet. Pony recently had a blood work-up and it looked good according to Doc. I don't know if there's anything in that which might indicate diabetes, but next time in, we'll check.

We appreciate all the suggestions, evidence of much appreciated support. And from who better than those who have been thru something similar. TY!