STRANGER THAN FICTION: WORLD'S TALLEST WOMAN FOUND WORKING AT NEWSPAPER

We all do it.

We go to the grocery store, wait in an ungodly line, and glance at the tabloid covers. If we're with friends or loved ones, we might joke about them.

"Hey, look! They've discovered Elvis Presley's two-headed alien love child! Ha, ha."

"Yeah, and here's one about Oprah's secret affair with Pee-Wee Herman!"

"No way!"

But we never buy them. Why not? Because of the shame associated with paying 99 cents to read about the Roseanne diet that helps you lose 80 pounds in two days.

Well, I pushed my shame aside while at Wal-Mart this week. The shame wasn't pushed aside completely, because it was 2 a.m. on a weeknight and Wal-Mart was pretty desolate.

The Weekly World News headline drew me in. "World's Fattest Man Loses 2,301 LBS -- Fat was flushed out so fast that 50 lbs. of skin were left hanging!"

There was a picture of this gargantuan man sitting on a bed, and underneath it was one of a smaller man holding up folds and folds of loose skin. There was so much skin, this man could have covered his private parts with his chest.

Apparently Buster Simcus of Dallas was inspired to drop the weight after seeing his own photo on the cover of Weekly World News in January. How he got out of the house to get his copy, we'll never know.

At the time, he was eating a dozen T-bone steaks and five chickens a day, but switched to a 350-calorie-a-day diet. It's listed in the newspaper, featuring such delicious breakfasts as: one slice dry wheat toast, two-inch wedge of cantaloupe, black coffee.

Apparently the diet worked, and now Buster is ready to hit the singles bars. "I'm going to start having fun with the ladies," the article said. "Finally, I'm going to have a real life like everybody else."

Yeah, like everybody else who carries around a 50-pound skin drape.

I knew I had to have the whole story. The Other Half paled as I put the tabloid on the counter. "I've never been so proud," he said.

I assured him that nobody would ever know about my purchase. Our secret was safe with the 2 a.m. check-out girl.

Just then, four people with a total of five teeth among them got behind us. One of them snatched up my magazine.

"Lookee here, Hubert! This man lost over 2,000 pounds in eight months!"

"Dammit, Martha! How many times do I gotta tell you that stuff ain't real? It's absolutely impossible to weigh 2,000 pounds."

"I don't know about that. Granny Schnerbush weighs about 1,000 pounds. Did you see the way she snapped that lawn chair in two?"

Now I own the Oct. 17 Weekly World News for myself -- no more of that sneaky browsing in the Wal-Mart line. It was worth every penny of my 99 cents in the educational value alone.

I found out that "Fur Coats Made From Bigfoot Hides Selling For $750,000!" Yes, fur trappers in the Himalayas are snaring, shooting and skinning Bigfoots, and every woman in Tokyo wants a coat made from the fur.

This is exactly the kind of story that makes the American consumer distrustful of journalists. If the reporter had done his job correctly, he would have discovered that there is only ONE Bigfoot, and he lives in Bollinger County. He just ate a Bollinger County family's dog in 1992, according to a story I read in an old Tipoff.

Fido, beware.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.