I'm sure I'm not the only one. I can't possibly be the only one. However, it felt like only something this heinous could happen to me. It all started one day when I decided I wanted to try to lose some weight. I think we were doing the ever-popular Weight Watchers program, and I needed a scale. I wanted to be able to start weighing myself weekly - like they do at the meetings. However, I didn't need a bunch of people weighing with me. Stepping on a scale is a personal thing. Regardless of who you are or what you weigh, it's really only your business. The fact that our license feels the need to have our weight indicated on it by the honesty of our subconscious under-valued vocal proclamation to the clerk at the desk is completely useless. If you need to tell a cop that you were burgled, you aren't going to say he was about 400 pounds officer! No! You are going to say he was a fat guy. Our license should remove height and weight from the printed face of the card, and just like our fingerprints it should have an accurately weighed and measured barcoded listing on the back of the card. It should also update automatically when you come renew your license. You stand at a counter, why not install a scale to weigh the person. Let the scientists figure out the lasers that will record your height, that's not my job. A scale. Yes, that's what I needed. I strolled into a large bed and crap store and walked around until I found the scales. I knew at some level I was avoiding it, because they can be expensive, but never the less I found them after some required anti-anxiety shopping to prelude my search. I thought to myself, that there were too many scales to choose from. But after staring at them for a minimum of twenty minutes, I selected one. No to the glass one, I don't want to shatter the thing and then subsequently have to pull shards of plate glass out of my heel. No to the rotary one, I don't want to be hypnotized every time I stand on it by the wheel whirling around to my actual weight. You are getting very sleepy... Okay, this one looks good, it isn't over $50 and it is aesthetically pleasing. I pull it off the shelf and set it down on the floor. Now to test its reliability and durability. I step on it. Error message. Weird! Well that's certainly not the scale for me. That one is broken. I put the scale back on the shelf. I select another one. I set it down again like before and I step on it. Error message. My word! These scales are trash! I left that one on the floor and hastily grab another. Error. Okay, bed and crap store! You have a lot of nerve to put all these defunct scales out on the shelf. How do you expect someone to buy one of these horrible devices if they don't work in the store! Rip another off the shelf, noting that it is substantially more expensive than the two before and maybe double the price I had intended to pay. Error. At this point, I pull down the three most expensive scales. I'm almost sweating from the calisthenics I'm being forced to act out in the process of scale down step on, scale down step on, scale down step on - remember, I am overweight. In rapid succession I demo each of them all to evaluate that they too are all defective scales. I'm furious that I have come to this store. I'm furious that this store cannot produce a working scale. I'm furious that this process is so ridiculous. Does everyone go through this relentless process? Does every scale in this store malfunction? Can the buyers not purchase one capable and beautifully designed scale that will accurately weight me? I take a breath and pull down one more scale... This is it. It's our of my price range, clearly more advanced than I needed or wanted, but this has to be the holy grail scale. The one. My new two faced best friend to greet me every morning. I turn it on, I set it down and I step on it with all the hope and eagerness in the world to finally get the machine to register those three little numbers. I am almost holding my breath. There are something like eight or nine scales down around me on the floor. Including the glass one. Error. This is when I about lose it. I grab the scales and thrust them onto the shelves in an almost fit of rage. I can't believe this. Not a single scale works! What is this company doing? Why can't I just buy a god damned scale? When I get the last scale stuff in its new home is when I noticed what would completely change this situation and divert all of my feelings to a completely different stream of emotions. On the box of one of the scales. Clearly printed. Big red letters. Max weight: 300 pounds. I just stared at it for a couple of seconds. This was the same amount of time it takes for your to hear an explosion after you've already seen it erupt. Flash! One, two, three... BOOM!! Like the brightest light bulb it was clear. I was beyond way too fat to be weighed. For the first time in my life that I can remember, my weight has finally excluded me from something I wanted. I had never experienced something like this before. Looking back, I feel bad for the person who had to come clean up the mushroom cloud and subsequent destruction that occurred next. I don't even really remember much. The light bulb went off, I had my fat epiphany, and next I was walking out of the store after hearing scale after scale crash to the floor. Clearly I obliterated the shelf full of scales. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, all I can imagine is that it was probably very much like the writer who has writers block, but needs to finish his story, papers all over the desk, crumpled on the floor, wastebasket heaping, spilling into the floor, typewriter humming with not a single hammer striking the paper. All in one swift motion, an arm clears the desk of everything in its path. A literary avalanche that cannot be stopped. What was a creative process is now a blank space. The empty hole that was shot through my heart is a perfect match of the bare shelf where once there were at least twenty scales. I cannot tell you if there was an audible barbaric howling vocal device that accompanied the symphony of squealing boxes, crushing packages, and shattered hopes and dreams for I do not recall. All I know is that the shelf, like my heart and the writers desk were all in the same: empty. I left the store. I never bought a scale. I still do not own a scale I, myself, have purchased. All I have is this story.
