This Will Explain Everything

by Linda Sanchez

I had refused to let the medical assistant weigh me, had instead thrown out a number that sounded like it could be plausible, claiming I’d weighed myself earlier. Now, alone in the doctor’s office, I step gingerly, cringing, onto the digital scale. I’m so out of practice, I forget to remove my shoes, so I jump right off, step out of my shoes, strip down to my socks, and as a further measure, exhale fully before stepping back on. Still not great. I try a few more times but things don’t improve, so I pull my clothes back on mournfully, stung by the instant silver precision of the digital scale and feeling acute nostalgia for the old fashioned slidey scale, the torture device whose clunky heavy metal parts always made me feel like I was being evaluated as livestock, the medical assistant/farmhand invariably doing a terrible job of suppressing her surprise as she slides the metal widget higher, ever higher. The digital scale had proven that my guess had been off by quite a bit, so when the doctor finally shows up in the room, crisp and efficient and thin, I do my best to angle myself on the examination table, so she will think me fat, yes, but not a liar.

6S

Linda Sanchez is a tantalizing mix of efficiency and whimsy, as adept at creating spreadsheets as she is at flirting with wildflowers. She draws inspiration from house spiders and highway debris. When not writing, she conducts howling concertos for neighborhood dogs and puts her spices in alphabetical order. She was voted "Most Likely to Have a Frog in Her Pocket" during a recent conversation among friends. You can read more of Linda's work here.