The Southwest Voice

All of my friends are on a diet. Even my men friends. It’s either a diet to gain weight, lose weight, redistribute weight or maintain weight. It gets so dratted boring. 

The only one who is any fun is my friend’s beer drinking husband. He drinks light beer. That’s his idea of a diet and he is going to stick to it! His paunch has retreated just a teeny. 

We “girls” were out the other night and discovered a place that has a separate specialty menu listing how many carbs, the number of calories and total grams of protein and fat in each serving. It also offers a low cal dessert that closely resembles a haystack sitting on chocolate syrup with a quarter teaspoon of whipped cream on top. No cherry. No nuts. 

We all quietly studied the menu. The waitress stopped by three times to ask us if we were ready to order. Finally, on her fourth visit, she said, “How are we doing? Are we ready to order?” 

I said, “Well, this 'we' is ready to order. I’ll have the guacamole burger with fries and a chocolate milkshake. May I please have some ranch dressing on the side?” 

I could see her furiously writing, stifling a giggle and waiting for the others to order. We had made such a point of asking every imaginable question about the diet menu. There was a long silence. No one could believe that I had gone off the wagon!

My mother was always proud that I had an assertive, take-charge personality. Sometimes it annoyed my friends but this time they were impressed with my decision making. I believe if they could have they might have elected me President of the United States on the spot! Or at least Secretary of State! 

“I’ll have chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and heavy on the gravy,” announced the one with the least amount of weight to lose.  Another spoke up. “Give me the cheese sticks, some fries, some French fried onions and a patty melt.” We all giggled. She didn’t really have that much weight to lose but she wanted desperately to maintain so every time the rest of us went on a diet she did, too.   

The waitress could see that we had totally lost interest in the “diet” menu.  She took our orders and we watched her gallop back to the kitchen, holding her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud all the way to the chef! 

We actually heard a very loud, short burst of laughter from the kitchen and then muffled giggling. How rude! 

We looked at each other, thumbs up and said, “Woohoo, I won’t tell if you won’t tell.” Who were we going to tell? Each other? 

Just as our feast was set before us by the giggling waitress, our skinniest friend walked in with her equally skinny husband. They both look just like they did in college except for his graying temples. Her hair is the same color as it was in college. (It’s a miracle!) 

She stopped to say hi, surveyed our plates and asked, “How are the diets going?” 

We told her we were celebrating because between the three of us we had lost three pounds that week. Actually, why did we even have to answer her? Probably because we felt obligated, to say nothing of guilty as sin! If we’d just keep our mouths shut about dieting we wouldn’t have to go through this every time someone sees us go off the wagon. 

We heard them order smothered pork chops and a baked potato with everything for their main course. She even had the nerve to say, “Light on the vegetables but give me a huge potato with lots of butter, please.” 

“I bet they order dessert, too,” my weight-maintaining friend said. We stayed as long as we could to see if they did but they were still eating appetizers when we left. Fried cheese, stuffed mushrooms and fried shrimp. And a huge basket of warm garlic toast! And drinking margaritas!  Skinny is not as skinny does! I bet she didn’t even have to unbutton the top button. 

I gained five pounds that night. It’s genetic.