Mental Telepathy and the Bathroom Scale
By Jim Walker 3–18–26
So, I was out for a run … as far as you know.
And, after finishing said exercise and writing down my immediate results, which were successful … as far as you know …
I still had one number to get.
Now, this last number is kind of the king of all numbers in most people’s “get-in-shape” programs. And it is, of course, weight. I mean, your time in the 50-yard dash really doesn’t matter if you can’t fit through your front door to get out and run said dash.
The weight digits, as offered by your bathroom scale, are kind of the key indicator to your overall progress.
And, please, no pithy platitudes from gurus here, advising that, “All you need do is eat green, walk a little, drink five gallons of spring water a day and think good thoughts. Just ignore the weight and it will move on to someone else.”
While I appreciate the schadenfreude of the latter part of that, experience has taught me that you absolutely need to obsess over the number shown on your bathroom scale, with the tone of the rest of your day uplifted or destroyed by said number.
And so, I apprehensively approached said scale.
But not before stripping down to only memories and imagining the uplift resulting from petting kittens and having 100 helium balloons tied to my wrists. Anything that might add an ounce, including drinking water, injecting Ozempic, rubbing in Rogaine or applying a tooth-whitening strip, would wait until after the weigh-in.
“It” did not put the lotion on “its” skin … yet.
As I delicately lifted the digital demon from its spell-guarded vault of containment, and eased it onto the most favorable lumps on the floor, hands trembling like a nitro-man in a B-movie, I focused my mind on images of a number, a number glowing-red in cosmic darkness — a number 10 pounds less than the scale had showed me when last we met.
“Why?” you, the uninitiated, ask.
Here, I pause and point the microphone at the audience, so we can all answer in unison: “Because the scale remembers.”
Digital scales, having been sent to us from a Terminator future, are programed with evil intent. Their job is to assist with the machine takeover by causing us to self-hate and thereby self-destruct.
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But they are weak-minded.
A digital bathroom scale remembers the gut-punch it gave you the last time you stood on it, and uses that as a starting point when next you step on, adding a percentage that is small enough to be believable, yet large enough to crush your soul.
The only way to get the better of a digital scale is to first confuse it, and then telepathically nudge it in the right direction.
Step one in this two-step process is to give said scale a new reading to play with, an erroneous, confusing number — before you let it “advise” you.
And here the audience gives back a loud: “Ummhmm.”
Step one is well known.
You place one foot on the scale and cling to the door frame, lifting ever-so-slightly with your fingers so that only about half of your actual weight is pushing onto the scale. This step isn’t easy, because the weight you are pressing down with will fluctuate, and you must stabilize it before the scale catches on to your cheat and calls “Error.”
When you do get things stabilized, and the scale now thinks a small child has just weighed itself, you step off the scale and take a moment to rub your hands together in sadistic delight before taking step two.
Well, actually, step two began the moment you approached the scale, and continued through the false weigh-in.
Step two is that imagining of a 10-pounds-less-than-last-time number, imagining it hard, visualizing it, even speaking it out loud, in case the future is listening.
The scale, being inherently evil, but also being a bit of a drooler, doesn’t realize the number you are mentally pushing on it is different from last time. And, anyway, the false weight you just gave it has cleaned the pipes, so to speak. The digital dolt doesn’t know who is steering it or what its programming calls for in this situation.
Now, understand, the scale does take actual weight into its calculations. While it won’t replicate the 10-pounds-less number, exactly, it will drop the extra percentage tack-on, thinking it will give you, or the child, that figure next time.
Again, the uninitiated might ask, “But don’t you want to know your actual weight?”
And, here, the audience responds loudly: “No! It’s about winning!”
And having a nice rest-of-the-day.
To paraphrase a guru: “And said weight goes looking for someone else.”
Jim Walker is a writer for SCVNews.com/SCVTV. His humor columns, under “Don’t Take Me Seriously,” are published at Jim’s Book, Medium.com and elsewhere.
