We Have a New Bathroom Scale

Can I handle the truth?

My husband and I are on the other side of 65. I would like to think I’m gracefully taking aging in stride; I stopped coloring my hair, am writing and reading more, sleeping in and, to be honest, letting a little more meat get on the bone, so to speak.

My husband, on the other hand, has taken to aging the way one would to a nest of invading fire ants: total and unrelenting attacks on all fronts. He’ll post new diets on the refrigerator or add new and unusual foods to the grocery list. Vitamin and dietary supplements are mysteriously appearing in the medicine cabinet. He walks, bicycles, or lifts weights at least four times a week. He’s changing up his eating routine the way sports teams change up pitchers or tight ends. All in pursuit of the ‘tight end’ he wants for himself, I’m guessing.

Don’t get me wrong. He’s doing all the right things, given his family medical history; I fully support him. And it wouldn’t hurt me to start taking some of his recommendations to heart before my own heart revolts. Almost daily he exhorts me to move more, drink more water, or try a new moisturizing cream.

Yesterday, he brought home a new bathroom scale.

“What’s wrong with the old one?” I asked. The old one has been with us for several years and was working fine, in my opinion. Even if I don’t like what it tells me.

“It isn’t weighing right. I think it’s a few pounds off,” he replied.

“Who cares if it’s a few pounds off?” I answered. “I don’t think that means we need a new one. And how can it be ‘off’? It’s not like we’ve ever drop-kicked it through the bedposts,” I said, thinking this was another one of my husband’s jabs against the fire ants of excess weight. “You just don’t like what it’s telling you.”

“It’s telling me it’s broken.”

“It’s a scale. A pound is a pound.” But he seemed happy to have made this purchase, and as long as he was happy and occupied, I could commandeer the TV remote. He even took the old scale to the garbage bin without being asked which, in and of itself, almost gave me a heart attack.

The next morning, after wasting as much time in bed Wordle-ing, checking email, and scrolling through Facebook and Instagram as much as I dared before feeling guilty, I went into the bathroom and stepped on the scale.

I was two and a half pounds lighter. Even after the previous night’s Häagen Dazs ice cream bar.

“Huh,” I said, to no one in particular. “It’s a good thing we replaced that old, broken bathroom scale.”