Val is a Little Light in the Sneakers. Allegedly.

Last week Val was in the shop for diagnostics. Let the record show that she was firing on all cylinders, no fluids needed replacing, and she still has considerable miles left on her chassis.

Yes, last Tuesday I had my regular 6-month checkup. I hate those things. The wait is annoying, the once-over minimal, but the only way to get more drugs is to go. Legal drugs, of course. Not the fun kind. Just enough to keep my blood pressure in the normal range, so the top of my head doesn't shoot off like the cap of an empty water bottle squeezed by a freshman boy if you are silly enough to let pupils carry beverages into your classroom. And a daily dose of thyroid med since I only have a scrap of my organ left. Joke's on you, though, because when the nuclear bomb drops, I will die slowest! No radiation is going to build up in MY scrappy thyroid!

So I went. I waited an hour to be called back. And that's when the most incredible thing happened! That jabbermouth nurse called me. My mom used to take her individually wrapped peppermints in a zip-lock bag. She said she was being nice, but I think it was in an effort to shut her up. Oh, she's friendly as not-heaven...but you'd think at some point the nurse taking your vitals should just clam up her yap and do her business.

Usually, Yappy says, "Let's get your weight," and leads me through the 4th floor inner-sanctum labyrinth to the tall scale with the beam and push weights like on a triple beam balance that you might find in a science lab. Usually, I take my mom's old tactic, and say, "Is that really necessary?" Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I don't blame her for the weigh-in on these checkups. But for a flu shot appointment? I think that is overkill.

Anyhoo...Yappy just took off before I could loosen up my crackling knees, and it was off to the races. She didn't say where we were going, so I tried not to lose sight of her. I'm really not very good with directions. And all at once we came to the section of the hallway that houses the scale. You know. Where the world passes you by, all ears, listening in on your confidential medical statistics. It's like a corral of milling patients and the nurses wrangling them.

Well...Yappy told me to step up on the scale, and I did. Because, you see, Val has been cutting back, making wise choices in her feeding habits. I knew I had lost more than 10 pounds since my last visit. More than 20. More than 30. I daresay more than 40. I stepped up on that scale, letting Yappy's jabberwocky go in one ear and out the other. She grabbed those weights and shoved them to and fro. The scale began to balance. With barely an aside from some self-tale Yappy was yapping, she blurted out the amount of Val's weight.

AND IT WAS 39 POUNDS LESS THAN VAL'S ACTUAL WEIGHT LOSS!

Hick in a tuxedo pumping a handcar! 

Yappy had read the lower of the two beams wrong. I was sure. I know the top one, showing single pounds, was right, because I looked at it. But I think she forgot which notch she put the bottom one in. No way have I lost 39 MORE pounds than I have subtracted weekly from start to now on my home scale. That's preposterous!

I called her on it. When she got me to the exam room and started updating info on her laptop.

"That weight can't be right."

"Well, when you were here last time, you weighed X."

"Yes. And there's no way I have lost that much. Some, yes. But not THAT much!"

"What do YOU think you weigh?"

So I told her. If only it was that easy every time.

Let the record show that Yappy refused to take the blame. "I have tried to tell Doctor that the scale is off. You wouldn't believe how many people tell me they weigh more than what it says."

Um. Yes. I WOULD.

I appreciate Yappy's inability to judge my girth. But she's gotta put that fat mouth of hers on a diet.