The Army

At first she thought it was a mistake. Stupid Cliff messed with the scale again.

“Very funny,” she called to her husband in the next room. “Now please fix the scale.”

Cliff walked into the bathroom. “We have a scale?” he asked.

She looked down at her feet. “Yes. I happen to be standing on it.”

He frowned. “I always thought that was an extremely dusty magazine that you never bothered to throw away.”

Cliff was right. The scale was extremely dusty. She bent down to wipe some of the debris off, just in case that was what was tampering with her weight.

She stepped on it again. The number was the same. 225. Am I pregnant? No, that can’t be. Cliff hasn’t touched me in ages.

“Rhonda, give the scale a break,” Cliff said, interrupting her mental blame-game.

“Is that a fat joke?” she demanded.

Cliff raised his eyebrows. “Honey, what joke?”

It was time to hit the gym.

***

She detested these wretched mirrors. All they did was make her realize how bad she looked. She glanced over her shoulder to see if the toothsome, toned man had left the rowing machines. She had embarrassed herself by being unable to make the stupid thing work. Then Mr. Long, Tan and Handsome had come along and adjusted the weight from 50 lbs. to 5 lbs. What a nightmare.

She eyed her reflection with conviction. I look like Jabba the Hutt. No, worse! I’m starting to look like Mother!

Mom!

Of course it wasn’t her fault that she had gotten this corpulent! It was the work of her mother, the magical cook! Oh, she could make anything taste good! She would cook up everything in the house and shove it down Rhonda’s throat until Rhonda had adopted these eating habits for life.

Curse those second helpings of pork roast, lamb chops, mashed potatoes, and pudding.

Mmmmm… Pudding…

She decided to weigh herself once more before she left the gym. It was stupid to think that she had lost some weight since that morning, but Rhonda was confident that the whole twenty minutes she spent on the treadmill (mostly thinking about food) had not gone to waste.

She timidly crept onto the scale and peeked at the number. 223! She raced home to tell Cliff.

This was a feast-worthy feat!

***

“Cliff I can’t bear to look. You look for me!” Rhonda stood planted atop the scale, fingers covering her eyes.

          Last night had not been pretty. Cliff was still angry that Rhonda had completely devoured the earthquake, hurricane, and tornado surfiets.

          She readied herself as her husband leaned over the scale to read the numbers.

          “You know those two pounds you lost yesterday?” he asked.

          She nodded slowly.

          “They’re back with reinforcements.”