Part X - Taboo.
At 7:15 the car rolled up and out stepped Emily and her younger sister. And nobody else. Emily explained that her brothers had gone out rollerblading, and that one of them had wiped out and "gotten all torn up," so they couldn't come. I was kind of bummed, but oh well.
We took them on the grand tour of our palacial suburbian dwelling, as is our custom, and ended up in the back yard jumping on the trampoline.
Now, I consider myself a somewhat educated man, and at times I am even known for having a bit of tact. As such, I am well aware that only under very unique circumstances is it appropriate to discuss body weight in the presence of women. Such conversation inevitably leads to social embarrassment on my part, my chances of getting a date with any eligible women in the vicinity irrevocably destroyed by Darth Vader's Death Star Ray of Female Fickle Will.
There is absolutely no way to come out of a conversation about body weight without having caused immense emotional grief to a woman with such comments as "
ou look great!" or "Wow, you've lost weight, haven't you?", which in the woman's mind translate to "It's a shame they don't make paper bags big enough to cover your head AND your body, you revolting excuse for a living entity!" and "
ou're still so fat that I wouldn't be able to look at you without wretching even if I had the intestinal fortitude to spend my spare time at a leper colony wallowing in fecal matter and juggling the refuse butcherings from a nearby slaughterhouse."
SOOOOOO, it should be just as surprising to you as it was to me when Emily voluntarily brought up the subject of body weight, and subsequently revealed her own weight, which did in fact surpass my own weight, and that by a full 10 kilograms (22 pounds for you customary folk). And certainly put her in the size/weight bracket roughly described as "Would Probably Beat Me in Arm Wrestling."
To some this might not be very significant, but to me it just seemed that she didn't really lend any credence to socially accepted norms of taboo and acceptable behavior (as we saw with Jack, Juan, and Benito, and as we will yet see in abundant quantity with Clark.)
