Last week, my wife sent me a questionnaire to determine
where I stood, weight-wise, in comparison to the rest of the world. I typed in the relative numbers, and learned
that I weighed less than 97% of the men in my age group in the United States,
and less than 83% of such men in the world.
This came as such a pleasant surprise that I called up my wife and took
her out to lunch.
I’m not really sure what to make of these statistics. I know the average weight in this country is
rising. My own weight has varied over
time. Growing up, I was always on the
heavy side, and for most of my life I’ve weight at least forty pounds more than
I do today. Counting my calories has not
only removed the weight and kept it off, but it’s ensured I don’t eat M&Ms
by the handful when my mood sinks, and has improved my self-image.
What intrigued me most about the questionnaire was how it
ranked me in comparison with the average BMI (Body Mass Index) of other
countries. According to the World Health
Organization, I have the most in common, weight-wise, with the people of Eritrea,
a country on the horn of Africa. Its
citizens stare across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia & Yemen, the latter
country being notable, in fiction at least, for its promising Salmon fishing
industry (see the Ritz Cinema link below).
The Eritreans have been ruled by the same president for nineteen years,
and have a single-party government. They
receive their news solely from government sources, which ranks them below North
Korea on their openness to outside reporters.
I grew up in the Nazarene Church, not one recognized by the Eritrean
government. So, after my parents had
been thrown in prison (and perhaps tortured), had they been willing to convert,
I might have been brought up in the dominant Orthodox Church, or been raised as
a Roman Catholic or a Lutheran.
Otherwise, my parents would have remained in prison without charge or
trial, and I would have grown up as a street urchin. But even if they had opted to become
Lutherans, which seems the closest to Nazarene belief and practice, we would
have been in the minority, as the population is largely divided between
Orthodox Christians and Sunni Muslims.
As national events are tied to the Christian (Orthodox) calendar, unless the
Lutherans observed the same religious year, again, my parents and I would have been
cultural outsiders.
In a country in which 80% of the population survives on subsistence farming, my parents would likely have raised crops or tended animals. While education
is available to all, I doubt my parents could have paid the school fees, given
their status not only as farmers, but also as reluctant converts to a minority religious
group. But even if they had managed such
a feat, given the state-controlled media environment, I find it doubtful I
would have aspired to be a novelist. It
goes without saying that I probably wouldn’t have a computer, let alone a blog.
One of the reasons we love Fantasy is because it’s fun to
imagine becoming a knight, wizard, or king (or their female equivalents). We love to imagine that if we lived in a
different place and time, our lives could be more glamorous. But I found it interesting to muse on what my
life might have been like, based upon my family’s background and beliefs, had I
grown up in an African country I hadn’t heard of before I completed the
questionnaire. Suddenly, life here didn’t
seem so bad, even if I’ve yet to fulfill all my personal goals. Perhaps I ought to call my wife and thank her
again for sending me the questionnaire.
No, better yet, maybe I’ll take her out for a celebratory lunch.
Musing on my weight-relations,
Dragon Dave
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