Aelys, my last American girlfriend, was not a big girl, she was average in size. Despite that, whenever she walked across the room in the cabin we lived in, she caused a panic. The floor shook. Dishes rattled on their shelves. The cats got scared. A couple of times, I thought we were having an earthquake and crouched in a doorway. She was not pleased at my reaction; but, it wasn’t just me - our cats had run for cover too. (When I walked across the same floor, it did not shake; I am not graceful, and I am a lot heavier than she, so I could not understand why she clopped around like a cow.) Also, she had a habit of eating while standing up, and when she wasn’t eating, her jaws were often working on a piece of chewing gum. In a word, she was bovine.
Walmart is a chain of warehouse-sized stores in the USA that sell a vast range of discounted merchandise. Their merchandise is notorious for its poor quality. It tends to break or wear out quickly. From the shopper’s long term economic perspective, it is better to spend more money on one good thing that will last than to buy twenty of an inferior version of the same thing at Walmart. Like MacDonalds, Walmart has a reputation for putting Mom and Pop stores out of business, of abusing its employees, of bulldozing forests and historical buildings to erect more store locations, and of ruining scenic views. Many Walmart employees are paid starvation wages. Hilary Clinton sat on the board of directors of Walmart in the 1980s and 1990s. This was a formative period for the Walmart corporation, and she doubtless played a role in making it the monster it is today.
I had never been to a Walmart until I met my Aelys. As a child, they didn’t exist where I lived, and by the time they started popping up, I already knew about their reputation. I had not been to a MacDonalds since I was 12 until I met her. She loved Walmart and trash food. Her whole family used to make a day out of shopping at the one and eating at the other. She bullied me into going a couple of times. Each time I ended up with a migraine.
People watching at a Walmart is an unforgettable experience. The way they dressed, styled their hair, behaved in the store, and talked were all interesting, but one thing that stood out was the way people walked, when they did walk, that is. Most of the Walmart shoppers were obese. Half the people were in motorized wheel chairs. Outside of a hospital, I had never seen so many people riding medical equipment.
Of the ambulatory, a large proportion walked in a way that Aelys calls the “Walmart Lurch.” The Walmart walker leans forward, setting her weight on her elbows which are planted on the bar handle of a shopping cart. In this hunched position, she walks the store aisles in a slow, lurching motion. She is usually a behemoth of a woman, and she can look quite ridiculous walking bent over this way.
The experience of people watching at Walmart left me with a vague feeling of guilt, grief, and a migraine, not unlike when I was little when my grandparents used to drive us through the worst slums of Chicago to gawk at the extreme poverty and degradation of the ethnic neighborhoods. Thus, people watching in the USA has been an overwhelmingly depressing experience.
At the fashion show party, I spent some time people watching. Instead of leaving me shocked at how far the human race has fallen, the deportment of many of the women was impressive. After my experiences at Walmart, this was a pleasure to see. I could picture them as children being instructed on correct posture and gait, walking around with books stacked on their heads. They moved with grace. Also surprising, there weren’t many fat people, and the few who were obese were not ostracised for being different. The obesity epidemic had not yet spread across the English Channel to France.
Eventually, a woman in a low cut burgundy cocktail dress offered me a glass of champagne. She was striking. A ruby cross hung where the gleam of its rubies drew the eyes to her breasts. She had the fine and delicate features of a classic beauty, a model, high cheekbones, a sculpted nose with almost the Greek bridge. Her body was svelte. Her limbs were well-formed and had good muscle tone. She was elegant and her movements smooth and balanced. I imagined that she had trained in ballet as a child (she had). Indeed, most people here, and Paris in general, had a graceful comportment that I had rarely seen until I came to Europe. Her eyes had a gimlet quality that I found strange. I had recently seen a television show called Game of Thrones, and she reminded me of one of the characters, the Scarlet Priestess.
Drusilla and I talked for most of that evening. She had many of the same hobbies I had: skiing, running, and climbing. She worked for the fashion designer Dior on the Champs-Elysées in accounting, not modelling.
She looked older than me, maybe in her late 40s or early 50s, but she had taken care of herself. She was not decrepid like most Americans are by the time they reach that age. Her body wasn’t thick. Her face didn’t sag, and I suspected that other important bits didn’t sag either. There were no wrinkles other than faint crows feet around the eyes.
I was thrilled to have met someone I was attracted to and who seemed interested in me. Within a few days after the party, we were spending time together. I enjoyed her company. She was intelligent and interesting. She was also more than ten years older than me.
As with intellectual incompatibility when one has an IQ on the extreme end of the curve, incompatibility based on age differences loses its normal meaning when one has an unusual IQ. Age is sometimes just a number, as long as you maintain a healthy mind and body. I didn’t worry that she was older.
For a moment, I thought back to my Walmart days with Aelys. I thought about her mother. Mens sana in corpore sano is a Latin phrase that means ‘healthy mind in a healthy body.’ It has been understood as far back as Roman times that the state of the body is linked to the state of the mind, hence the expression. Aelys’ mother weighed 500 pounds and she seemed to like being that way. Her mother had also not read one book in her entire life, by her own admission. But those aren’t the things I hated about her. Her mother did not approve of my reading of scientific papers and literature in my spare time, and whenever she was around, she was always making comments about it. It is her personal choice to spend her spare time eating fat food and watching television, and as bad as those habits are, it’s none of my business (unless you consider the fact taht the obese cost taxpayers 60% more in medical care than those of healthy weight, and then you realise that your own hard earned money is being used to subsidize her bad choices). Likewise, what I did was not her business. I had never said a word about her weight or her lifestyle. I feared that it was only a matter of time before Aelys followed her mother’s lead.
Walmart is a chain of warehouse-sized stores in the USA that sell a vast range of discounted merchandise. Their merchandise is notorious for its poor quality. It tends to break or wear out quickly. From the shopper’s long term economic perspective, it is better to spend more money on one good thing that will last than to buy twenty of an inferior version of the same thing at Walmart. Like MacDonalds, Walmart has a reputation for putting Mom and Pop stores out of business, of abusing its employees, of bulldozing forests and historical buildings to erect more store locations, and of ruining scenic views. Many Walmart employees are paid starvation wages. Hilary Clinton sat on the board of directors of Walmart in the 1980s and 1990s. This was a formative period for the Walmart corporation, and she doubtless played a role in making it the monster it is today.
I had never been to a Walmart until I met my Aelys. As a child, they didn’t exist where I lived, and by the time they started popping up, I already knew about their reputation. I had not been to a MacDonalds since I was 12 until I met her. She loved Walmart and trash food. Her whole family used to make a day out of shopping at the one and eating at the other. She bullied me into going a couple of times. Each time I ended up with a migraine.
People watching at a Walmart is an unforgettable experience. The way they dressed, styled their hair, behaved in the store, and talked were all interesting, but one thing that stood out was the way people walked, when they did walk, that is. Most of the Walmart shoppers were obese. Half the people were in motorized wheel chairs. Outside of a hospital, I had never seen so many people riding medical equipment.
Of the ambulatory, a large proportion walked in a way that Aelys calls the “Walmart Lurch.” The Walmart walker leans forward, setting her weight on her elbows which are planted on the bar handle of a shopping cart. In this hunched position, she walks the store aisles in a slow, lurching motion. She is usually a behemoth of a woman, and she can look quite ridiculous walking bent over this way.
The experience of people watching at Walmart left me with a vague feeling of guilt, grief, and a migraine, not unlike when I was little when my grandparents used to drive us through the worst slums of Chicago to gawk at the extreme poverty and degradation of the ethnic neighborhoods. Thus, people watching in the USA has been an overwhelmingly depressing experience.
At the fashion show party, I spent some time people watching. Instead of leaving me shocked at how far the human race has fallen, the deportment of many of the women was impressive. After my experiences at Walmart, this was a pleasure to see. I could picture them as children being instructed on correct posture and gait, walking around with books stacked on their heads. They moved with grace. Also surprising, there weren’t many fat people, and the few who were obese were not ostracised for being different. The obesity epidemic had not yet spread across the English Channel to France.
Eventually, a woman in a low cut burgundy cocktail dress offered me a glass of champagne. She was striking. A ruby cross hung where the gleam of its rubies drew the eyes to her breasts. She had the fine and delicate features of a classic beauty, a model, high cheekbones, a sculpted nose with almost the Greek bridge. Her body was svelte. Her limbs were well-formed and had good muscle tone. She was elegant and her movements smooth and balanced. I imagined that she had trained in ballet as a child (she had). Indeed, most people here, and Paris in general, had a graceful comportment that I had rarely seen until I came to Europe. Her eyes had a gimlet quality that I found strange. I had recently seen a television show called Game of Thrones, and she reminded me of one of the characters, the Scarlet Priestess.
Drusilla and I talked for most of that evening. She had many of the same hobbies I had: skiing, running, and climbing. She worked for the fashion designer Dior on the Champs-Elysées in accounting, not modelling.
She looked older than me, maybe in her late 40s or early 50s, but she had taken care of herself. She was not decrepid like most Americans are by the time they reach that age. Her body wasn’t thick. Her face didn’t sag, and I suspected that other important bits didn’t sag either. There were no wrinkles other than faint crows feet around the eyes.
I was thrilled to have met someone I was attracted to and who seemed interested in me. Within a few days after the party, we were spending time together. I enjoyed her company. She was intelligent and interesting. She was also more than ten years older than me.
As with intellectual incompatibility when one has an IQ on the extreme end of the curve, incompatibility based on age differences loses its normal meaning when one has an unusual IQ. Age is sometimes just a number, as long as you maintain a healthy mind and body. I didn’t worry that she was older.
For a moment, I thought back to my Walmart days with Aelys. I thought about her mother. Mens sana in corpore sano is a Latin phrase that means ‘healthy mind in a healthy body.’ It has been understood as far back as Roman times that the state of the body is linked to the state of the mind, hence the expression. Aelys’ mother weighed 500 pounds and she seemed to like being that way. Her mother had also not read one book in her entire life, by her own admission. But those aren’t the things I hated about her. Her mother did not approve of my reading of scientific papers and literature in my spare time, and whenever she was around, she was always making comments about it. It is her personal choice to spend her spare time eating fat food and watching television, and as bad as those habits are, it’s none of my business (unless you consider the fact taht the obese cost taxpayers 60% more in medical care than those of healthy weight, and then you realise that your own hard earned money is being used to subsidize her bad choices). Likewise, what I did was not her business. I had never said a word about her weight or her lifestyle. I feared that it was only a matter of time before Aelys followed her mother’s lead.