Just When a Snack Was Within My Reach

I don't get it. Chalk it up to one of God's perverse little whimsies. For reasons no longer remembered after all this time, and certainly no longer rational, we scheduled wellness exams for 2:30 this afternoon. I'm sure the logic had to do with something silly -- like work schedules -- but the result of it all was that we had to fast virtually the entire day. Nothing after 6:30 a.m. No coffee, no lunch, no soft drink. Nothing except the always-filling, always-satisfying "sky juice". Water. Great. All morning long I'm watching the clock, waiting for the hour. All morning long all I can think about is how hungry I am; and did I mention how nice a cup of coffee would taste?

Finally, the hour arrived. A couple of forms. A finger prick. A height measurement. A weight measurement. A waist measurement. A few calculations. Some numbers spit out of a machine. An "interpretive consultation" to learn what it all means. For the most part, painless enough. The numbers were all good -- LDL, HDL, Tryglycerides, Glucose -- save one: the infamous "Body Mass Index", my score on which landed me squarely in the "Obese" category. There was, of course, room for still greater offense. Just 9 short numbers away and I could have qualified for the "Severely Obese" classification. I suppose I should take some comfort in the fact that I am only 1.5 away from being merely "Overweight." Yeah, well, I'll get right to work on that.

In the meantime, I'm free! I'm finished! I can eat! Only, this is the part I don't get: all of a sudden I'm not hungry. I stopped by Costco to pick up more batteries for the church and just for the heck of it walk around. As usual there are all kinds of samples being offered -- salmon here, tacos there, eggplant lasagna on one aisle, chips and salsa on the next; and chocolate chip cookies -- but, for what might be the first time in my life, none of it looked good and lugged my batteries on by and toward the registers up front. I thought about going back to the wellness clinic to get my blood checked again -- maybe my temperature taken -- to see if somehow, suddenly, I had fallen ill.

On the other hand, it could have had something to do with that Body Mass Index score.

More likely, it is simply the inversion of the age-old ache to have something we can't have -- to want what we can't get: once I could have it, the ache was gone. It was all about the prohibition, not about the hunger.

That said, the eventual prospect of supper doesn't sound that bad.