February 7, 2005

I'd like to make it official that I do, in fact, have a tailbone, so you can all stop worrying. I realized this the other day as I was sitting up suddenly in the bathtub at a straight, 90 degree angle. "Hey!" I thought happily. "That new stabbing pain sensation in my rear end is probably a tailbone! I've always wondered where that went!" Well, mostly I just thought "Ow! I will now commence fearing bathtubs for several years!" But I might as well have thought the former, because, and this is a really happy thing, feeling one's tailbone means that (it's so wonderful) your butt is NOT fat.

Now, what those evil people at the Atkins Lifetime-Eating-Regimen-Maintenance-Program-But-Not-Diet Headquarters don't tell you when they are encouraging you to lose weight is that there are downsides to not being fat. Lots of downsides. One of those downsides is not, however, the comments from people. I love comments. I am almost a "comments ho." If I were a girl, however, this would be a downside. People are all the time randomly exclaiming things in passing to me like, "Wow! You look so good! And it feels like only yesterday you had more rolls than a Charmin factory!" Because I am a guy, I smile and say, "Thanks!" If I were a woman, I would burst into tears and call my mother, because I would just hate being told how wonderful I look. You see, this implies that I used to be fat. Trouble is, I will always used to be fat, so I can never appreciate a compliment about my appearance until the day I die (actually, I might rise out of my coffin like a trim and healthy Resident Evil zombie if the eulogist tries anything... if I were a girl, I would be that sensitive). But I'm not a girl, so I don't worry about it. And I also get to pee standing up. So there.

However, I do have to worry about many other things, like tailbones, which make it very hard to enjoy things like church, where they make a point of waiting until you are thin and have a tailbone before letting you sit down all service. When I was fat, it felt like every single song service was entirely standing-up, and if they ever let you sit down, the next song was We Will Stand or I Stand in Awe of You or I Stand Amazed in the Presence or Stand Up Stand Up For Jesus or Standing on the Promises or There's a Stirring Deep Within Me (Maybe It's Because The Service Ran Over Lunchtime). But now that I have a tailbone and standing up isn't nearly so bad, we practically never stand up. We certainly don't at Harding's daily 9 am mandatory chapel, where Can He Still Feel the Nails? is considered too energetic to really be worshipful. Instead, we stand up for maybe half a verse and then back down we go, tailbone-first into those awful folding chairs made of aluminum, which for you non-chemistry people is a substance that does not comform to tailbones like, at all. And don't get me started about bleachers.

There's also this new thing where I'm cold. I realize that it's February now, and thin people all over the country are observing that it's cold, and thinking that it's nothing special, but this is a new experience for me. Previously, I would say, "Gosh it's cold outside!" when I mostly meant "It sure is windy and the fountain appears to have flash frozen into a spiky ice sculpture but I'm just assuming it's cold because really I'm kind of toasty." When other people would complain about the cold, I would try to suppress arched eyebrows and a look of disdain. My former roommate (who likes to have his name mentioned in C-Files) actually kept a space heater in the shower, and I thought it all ridiculously unnecessary. "Yeesh. Why doesn't he just gain 120 pounds?" I thought contemptuously.

Well, I apologize for it all. I now realize how terribly wrong I was. Before, the only part of me that ever got cold was the epidermis. Now, whole new organs are feeling the bite of winter, such as the spleen. My spleen is not happy with this new development. It wants the fat back.

Oh, and here's a bizarre development. Last weekend, I actually had to go to bed for the first time in my life in a coat and sweatpants, like a senior citizen in a commercial from the DNC. My teeth were actually chattering. You might say, because you are presumptuous and won't let me finish the story (jerk), that I should have turned up the thermostat. Well, as it happened, the heater was kaput. I had to endure three whole days of no heater, until the heating guy showed up to fix it, after which he announced that, not only was the heater broken, but it had been broken since the dorm had been constructed four years ago. I have lived in this dorm for two years, and I never noticed the broken heater. I asked my former roommate about this later. "Why didn't you say something?!?!" were my exact words.

"I don't like to complain," he said, which is amazing considering he weighs something like, as a visual estimate, 5 lbs, counting shoes. It made me feel bad to think of all the helpless bunny-in-the-Muppet-Christmas-Carol-style shivering that must have gone on, while I typed away across from him, oblivious and comfortable in my warm cocoon of fat. Oh well. I'm over it.

Of course, once we got the heater fixed, we were so happy to have it back that we immediately turned it off and have left it off ever since. My suitemates will put on a coat and wrap in a blanket before they will think of turning up the heat. This is because, obviously, they are insane. Of course, it could also be that there is no "moderate" setting on that contraption, as far as we can tell, only "MEAT FREEZER" and "SUNNY SIDE OF MERCURY." The thermostat is also a little wonky. Any time it is touched with any more force than a sheet of paper fluttering against a pillow, the whole thing falls onto the floor leaving a messy bunch of wires and gizmos exposed on the wall. It still works, kind of, once it's placed back onto the wall, but it's very amusing to watch new people come in, exclaim, "It feels like a meat freezer in here! Surely there is a moderate setting on this contraption! *touch thermostat*" and then frantically try and fix the thing, while we pretend to hate them for breaking it.

So anyway, I've got to go bundle up for bed. By the way, I'm seriously considering moving my C-File post day to something besides Sunday night, but I can't think of a better time now, so I'll keep you posted. Have a good one.