The Weigh-In

When I was about fourteen we got a tall, heavy medical scale for our home. It was the kind of scale you see in doctors' offices, with metal bars you move and slide into place, only ours was painted a disconcerting shade of deep forest green. Dad found the scale somewhere and set it up next to the washing machines and utility sink off the family room downstairs.

It's an odd fact of human nature that scales are irresistible. Generally they are hidden away in a master bathroom or under a bed (I keep mine in a walk-in closet), but this scale was right out in the open, next to a washing machine. Nobody who walked through that room could resist. Friends from out of town touring the house? Weigh-in. Kids coming over to do homework taking a ping pong break? Weigh-in.

Walking through the oddly decorated family room (the previous owners had papered the room in a velvety flocked red design sometimes seen in Chinese restaurants, which gave the whole room a feeling not unlike the movie "The Shining"), otherwise restrained, normal people would look at the scale, look at Mom, look back at the scale, and ask, "Can I?" Weigh-in.

You couldn't weigh yourself naked on the scale, it being out in the middle of a very busy area in the house, but people at scales always do the same thing. Shoes off, of course. Set down the purse, of course. But then there is that moment when they do a mental checklist: "Will it look crazy if I take off my belt? How much do you think this necklace weighs, anyway?"

I was used to public weigh-ins because our ninth grade P.E. teacher, Kitchie Burdette, not only weighed us, but took all our measurements with a tape measure and recorded them weekly. One girl, D___, had a nineteen inch waist. Nineteen inches! Even Scarlett O'Hara only got her eighteen inch waist ("smallest in three counties") after being cinched into a corset by slaves.

"You weigh more than my mom," someone commented.

"Gee, thanks. At least I don't weigh more than your dad."

We'd always had weigh-ins at school, but never public ones. Either it took place one at a time, in the relative privacy of the school secretary's office, or behind a screen. I went through a period of four schools in four years (though we never moved during the school year, thankfully), and each year, someone different recorded my vital statistics.

Sixth grade at Eldorado School was the unfortunately named Mr Eggland, who himself was egg-shaped and at least 400 pounds. Seventh grade was the shift from sheltered Orange County private school to huge, urban school in LA, where all the school clerks were large black women whom I found at once intimidating yet strangely comforting. I imagined that being hugged to their large floral clad bosoms would be like being embraced by Grandma as I fell asleep next to her on the 220 bus. "Step up." They'd see the weight: "Mmm hmmm." This was said (these gals could make "mmm hmmm" into an entire paragraph of words) with some judgment. "Do you have a daughter? I'll bet she's bigger than I am!" I wanted to say. But I didn't, and they recorded my weight onto my permanent record. "Next!"

Eighth grade was Capitola Junior High, where we had co-ed P.E. team taught by a male and female instructor. We all loved the girls' teacher, Sid Crosson, a single mom who talked to us about her struggles raising her daughter on her own (she later married and became Sid Larsen, and by the time my sister had her, school administration prevented her from being as "cool" as she'd once been, and she was just a normal teacher like everyone else.) She surfed and skiied, and had waist-length shiny black hair. For certain topics, like "hygeine," we were divided into boys and girls, and they divided us for weigh-in day. Ms Crosson weighed us, and a student aide recorded the weights. Afterward, we had to run a mile in under 12 minutes, and I barely made it. I ran in K-Swiss tennis shoes with no socks, a look that had been the height of cool at my old school in LA, but looked strange in surfland.

And ninth grade was Kitchie, whose goal was for each of us to read food labels and do mathematical calculations of percentage of fat (the "Fit or Fat" book was a bestseller at the time, and food labels were still a novelty.) Kitchie also wanted each of us to find a lifetime sport, something we enjoyed that we could do forever. She brought Mr Shower, the sporty biology teacher who moonlighted as a real estate agent (he'd sold us our house when we first moved to Capitola) to talk to us about choosing a sport. He showed us a 45 minute slide show (set to music) of himself, skiing June Mountain with buddies and running the Ironman in Hawaii.

Kitchie had us choose a buddy, who would record our information each week. Kitchie or her smug aide weighed us, then our buddy would measure chest, waist, hips, and each thigh, calf, and upper arm. My buddy was Griselda Guido, the first friend I ever made at Capitola Junior High, when we both tried to get out of swimming in the icy cold water by telling the (male) English teacher who chaperoned us to the Soquel High pool that it was "that time of the month"; Sid Crosson never would have bought it. Griselda was a shy, soft-spoken girl who three years later would persuade most of the latina girls to vote for me as a write-in candidate for Homecoming Queen. Looking back, Griselda and I were sort of like a girls' version of "Napoleon Dynamite," though we drifted apart after freshman year.

Kennolyn Camp had weigh-ins, too, though the rationale behind it was mysterious. Rumor had it the scales were rigged between the initial weigh-in and the final one two days before we went home, to "prove" to our parents that the food, despite our complaints, was tasty and nutritious. Looking back, I think it's likelier we all just gained weight, but the thought of camp owners Uncle Max and Aunt Marion meticulously taking apart and reassembling scales the night before weigh-in was much more appealing.

Many schools still weigh students, and some even send notes home "informing" parents that their children are overweight. Is this a good thing? If my child failed the vision exam or hearing test, I'd want to know. But I can't just look at my kid and distinguish whether she's selectively ignoring me or actually going deaf. I'd like to think parents can tell whether their kids are overweight just by looking at them, but in a world where teenagers can sue McDonald's for not "telling them" daily supersized value meals make them fat, you never know.

As an adult, you're not subjected to many routine weigh-ins, unless you're an athlete or in the military. Pregnant women are weighed at every visit, and it's quite a shock if you're not used to it. There is something about a pregnant woman that makes everyone feel entitled to comment, including the medical office tech recording your official weight into your chart. Then soon enough, you have your baby, and you have eighteen years to obsess about someone else's weight for a change.