Why I never intend to fly again. It’s the VA’s fault. They
caused the whole thing, especially the one I call, “The VA Fat Nazi.”
It happened this way.
I went to the VA medical center in Little Rock. They treated
me very nicely and offered to help with my health and all. Little did I
suspect.
My first appointment was with a very attractive individual
who performed my initial screening. We got off to a marvelous start when she
announced, “You need to get weighed. First door on your weft.” Because of that
slight speech impediment on her part, I responded by indignantly informing her
that I was a happily married man, deathly afraid of my wife, and of advanced
age anyway.
After some good-natured unraveling, she directed me to a set
of serious-looking scales, noted the results, and gave me a target weight that
I couldn’t have reached following three consecutive completions of Marine Corps
Boot Camp while eating nothing but my own cooking. She compromised by setting
me up with Project Move, a weight-control program for vets, featuring monthly
weigh-ins before a group of peers. A lecture on health, nutrition, and
weight-loss followed, conducted by a very nice lady that I gratuitously labeled
“The VA Fat Nazi.” Actually, she was of the exact opposite demeanor, being
non-judgmental and respectful toward veterans, a rarity in my experience.
Long story short: I lost nearly 50 pounds before deciding to
take my first, and hopefully my last, airline flight.
Get this: I had reduced my waste size by four inches and,
for some inexplicable reason, decided to wear a pair of old britches on the
flight. I chose them for comfort, I suppose, but, for whatever reason, it was a
bad choice.
You guessed it. “Off with your shoes, worm! Off with your
belt, insect! Raise your hands in the air, imbecile! Keep your guns trained on
this one, it says here that he was in Vietnam.”
Oops. I could do two of the three without causing a mass
induction of “the vapors” among the females waiting in line. The third caused a
physical collapse, one immediately attributed to a moral collapse.
“Get those hands up. Didn’t you hear me?”
I’m sure they heard him in the next county but, oops
again. Gravity emerged to assert its reality, even in the face of current disbelief
in science and physics.
“Hands up, or assume the position, vermin!”
“Can I do them one at a time?”
“Do, and we’ll shoot you in the legs, one at a time,
slimeball!”
I managed to spread my legs apart enough to prevent my pants
from collapsing in the manner of a curtain falling when a magician makes a
woman disappear.
“Hold still, fool!”
After holding me in that position for maybe 15 minutes, they
let me though with a great show of disgust. A crowd had gathered on the other
side of the inspection area. It parted for me as I waddled toward a bench,
holding my pants with one hand and the basket containing my belt and other
worldly possessions with the other. The crowd watched with a collection of
sneers and grins, and I then knew what the German term Schadenfreude means.
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| I'm told they use this in training agents to identify suspicious characters. It's good to feel needed for something. |
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