My weight? It’s entirely relative

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/05/2017 (3386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has suddenly dawned on me that my weight is becoming a health hazard.

I don’t mean for myself; I mean my weight is becoming a hazard for people around me.

This dangerous state of affairs became clear last weekend when I hosted the Mother’s Day edition of the Winnipeg Free Press’s delicious and entertaining Sunday Brunch Collective.

I had just introduced singer-songwriter Sierra Noble — who is awesome and you should immediately drop whatever you are doing and run out and buy her new CD, City of Ghosts — and was attempting to step back into the audience when I tripped over one of the microphone cables.

What happened next was I lost my balance and then all 300 pounds of me began careening out of control, like a recreational vehicle spinning on an icy Winnipeg street, towards a lovely couple who were innocently enjoying brunch.

As I lurched toward their table, the couples’ eyes became the size of manhole covers and they flung their arms up in a protective manner as they faced the imminent threat of being fatally crushed by an overweight newspaper columnist.

Fortunately for everyone, at the last second, I regained my balance and was able to stop on a dime, which luckily was not in anyone’s pocket at the time. I made a big show of apologizing to the couple that I’d almost flattened and pretended I’d done it just to get a laugh, but everyone in the audience knew their Mother’s Day brunch had almost been marred by a near-death collision.

It forced me to spend some time pondering Einstein’s famous “E=mc2” theory, which states that everything in the universe is expanding, except my pants, which are contracting about two inches for every cheeseburger I consume.

It’s getting to the point where I no longer want to know what I weigh in normal human measurements. For example, when I go for a doctor’s appointment and they make me stand on the scale, I cover my eyes with both hands.

On the upside, I have discovered a brilliant and non-threatening method for discussing my potentially lethal bulk with my doctor.

“Hey, Doc, I currently weigh 19.2 wiener dogs,” I will bravely inform my MD, at which point she will roll her eyes and reply: “Huh?”

“It would also be correct to say I weigh about 4.975 golden retrievers,” I will say, smugly.

My doctor had a hard time understanding what I was talking about until I explained I recently stumbled on a brilliant new website called MyAnimalWeight.com, which converts your weight into the equivalent number of animals.

For instance, my current poundage is equivalent to 32,751,091.703 ants, which means if you took every single ant currently occupying my backyard and put them into a giant garbage bag, we would weigh roughly the same amount. I also weigh the same as 1,361,107.7906 bees, which means I would be a great deal of fun at a picnic.

I know nothing about the guys who started this helpful website — I assume they are guys because one of the reasons they created the site was to “make beer money” — but they are clearly geniuses.

“We started back in early 2017 as just an idea, that idea being, how many animals do I weigh (bees, rhinos, ducks, raccoons holding bowling balls, etc…) now here we are in mid-2017 as THE international animal weight conversion authority,” they boast on their Our Story page.

Along with making beer money and informing humans of their animal weight, the site creators also note they are committed to informing animals of their weight in other animals and getting featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

But I’m not just some idiot that tells his doctor how much he weighs in terms of exotic or household animals. No, I’m also an idiot that tells his doctor how much he would weigh if he was being examined on another planet.

Thanks to a website called Exploratorium, I am able to tell my doctor how much I weigh on any planet, moon or star in our solar system, which helps deflect serious health-related questions.

“You know, if we were on Mars right now I would only weigh 113.1 pounds,” I will inform my physician in a smug-sounding voice.

“Mind you, if you were weighing me on the dwarf planet Pluto, I’d clock in at a mere 20.1 pounds, which is way too light for someone with my impressive physique, you have to admit.”

I am not sure my doctor is as comforted as I am by converting my current Earth-bound human bulk into otherworldly or other-species terms, but that is not the point. The medical point is, if I land on top of you at brunch, you’re not being crushed by a 300-pound newspaper columnist. You’re being crushed by 0.02834467120181406 of an African elephant. Or 2.98 emperor penguins. And that kind of takes the sting out of it, doesn’t it?

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca