A LIKELY STORY: WRESTLING THE SCALES OF MY OWN FLABBY INJUSTICE

When they told me marriage would make me grow as a person, I didn't know they meant in the waistline.

"A hundred and eighty-two?" I said to an empty bathroom. I disbelievingly looked down at the scale, but the numbers stared glaringly back, understandably unaffected by my confusion. Scales make no excuses and offer no explanations.

I stepped off and watched the digital numbers quickly swirl back to two round zeroes and then vanish. I took the pen out of my ear, kicked my shoes off and stepped back on, insanely thinking that would somehow make a difference. But SOMETHING had to be wrong.

One eighty-two, the scale repeated stubbornly while maintaining its indifference.

I cursed. "Nah, can't be right."

I had weighed 150 pounds since graduating from high school and had remained that way unwaveringly through college. It didn't matter what I ate or how little exercise I got. Apparently, that has changed.

"Hey, Lore," I yelled into the living room over the television din of gunfire from a taped episode of Law & Order. "This thing right?"

"Yeah." Lori's voice was faint but audible. She knew what I was talking about without even asking. Wives are nifty things to have around sometimes.

"It's right?" I asked the bathroom, which already had turned its attention away from my plight and back to a dingy tub and a left-up toilet lid. "I weigh 182 pounds?"

How could that be? I work at a job that largely entails sitting stationary and looking blankly at a screen. I only eat McDonald's for lunch or the buffet at Pop's Pizza.

With Lori working nights, I mostly eat greasy meatball sandwiches and things like that for dinner. The major exercise I get involves typing and running after police cars. Well, driving after them.

So you can see why this whole weight-gain thing has me baffled.

I should never have gotten on the scale in the first place. My father's It's-Better-Not-To-Know philosophy seems to work for him. "I never go to doctors," he told me confidently once. "They can't find anything wrong with you if you don't give them the chance."

Oddly enough, that makes some sort of sense, doesn't it? They say ignorance is bliss, and I can't remember the last time he was sick. There has to be a correlation there.

Of course, he has begun to twitch a lot lately, and he doesn't always remember his name when you ask him the first time. Other than that, he's still the same old dad.

I don't know why I was so surprised to see my weight had gone up by over 30 pounds in six months, though. The signs were all there.

For weeks, people have been telling me how good marriage has been to me. Normally, it wouldn't mean anything, but they're usually looking at my midsection when they say that.

People who have never eaten my wife's cooking have made the comment that she must be a whiz in the kitchen.

Ditto here on the midsection looks.

And I could tell myself all I want that those almost exclusively worn jeans were my favorite pair. Truth is that those are pretty much the only jeans I can fit into. They're a size 34, bought by mistake one Christmas a couple of years ago. We all had a nice laugh when I pulled out the pants. Someone commented that I could fit two people in them.

Now they're beginning to get a little tight.

I'm trying to decide what to do about it. I could either exercise less or work out more. None of those options seems too appealing.

I think I'll think about it over a bag of Milk Duds.

Scott Moyers is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.