The Numbers

When I was in eighth grade my mother and I joined Weight Watchers together. Dutifully we would go to the weekly meetings Saturday morning, weigh in, and attend the lecture. In those days the counselor would hover over you and shift the scale weights up or down the balancing thingy, and if you lost weight, smiles and applause would ensue. If you gained weight, there would be frowns and harsh questions - did you follow the program? Did you eat your 1100 calories a day? Did you CHEAT? Are you the PIECE OF FILTH we always suspected you to be?

Later, at the beginning of class, the counselor would call out the weight losses. "Edna lost a quarter of a pound!" (Applause.) "Susie lost a pound and three-quarters!" (Applause.) "Margie lost FOUR POUNDS!" (Wild applause.) "Congratulations to all the losers this week - give yourself a hand!" (Sustained applause.)

Those of us who hadn't lost weight for the week sat guiltily, knowing our names wouldn't be called out, so by deductive reasoning everybody else KNEW we had gained weight. If we had lost a disproportionate amount the week before, and this week we showed a gain, maybe the others would look expectantly at you and say, "How much did you lose this week?" And you would say something like, "Oh, I was bad last week - I gained." And the smiles would vanish. Maybe someone would pat you on the shoulder and commiserate, and maybe you feebly offered a good excuse and would get some clucks of understanding, but mostly people would move away from you, like you had bad breath. The halo they put over your head the week before was snatched away and replaced with a Hester Prynne "A" - A for adipose, A for absolute failure, A for agonizing shame.

Now, most people who have gone on diets know that the body can metabolize at most 1/3 to 1/2 of a pound of body fat a day. At most. That means that if you lose more than 3 1/2 pounds in a week, maybe as much as 3 1/2 pounds of it is fat, and the rest is water, muscle, an emptier bowel, an emptier bladder, lighter weight clothing, etc. But it's not fat.

If you lose 6 pounds this week, maybe half of it is fat, and the rest is something else. Next week, when you weigh in, maybe it shows you didn't lose anything - but you could've lost another 3 pounds of fat and gained 3 pounds of water.

We know this. But when it comes time for before and after pictures, it's the grand total pounds lost that makes our hearts flutter. "150 pounds" or "80" pounds. The captions aren't "Before: didn't like himself very much." "After: learned to love himself."

In AA, the "number" is how long a person has been sober. "15 days." "23 years." Medals are handed out for each anniversary. A person's relative success is determined by how long they've remained sober.

But the number doesn't really tell the whole story. It's easy for a person to remain sober if they're in jail serving a 10-year sentence. No access to alcohol equals sobriety. A person who's out in the world of access and availability and remains sober for 10 years - now that's a different accomplishment. In other words, the "number" may not be relevant. Charles Manson hasn't killed anyone in 30 years. Neither has Squeaky Fromme. Are congratulations in order?

Please, let me take you by the hand. I'd like you to come with me for a moment to Scoreville.

Scoreville is a place where everything you do and everything you think about is scored, and your score hovers in the air above your head in numbers two feet tall. Each moment throughout the day, your score changes to reflect the "good" and "bad" things you do and think. You know and the whole world knows your number.

The relative "goodness" and "badness" of the things you do and think are unique to you; for example, eating a Krispy Kreme might be considered a "good" thing for a hungry, homeless man, and a "bad" thing for someone on a low-carb diet. Your aggregate score has a color, too, like a mood ring or a litmus paper - when your score is on the rise, it's blue, and the higher it goes at any given moment, the brighter blue it is. When your score is plummeting, it's pinkish, and if it's dropped a huge amount, it's almost blindingly bright, a fiery red-orange. When it's neutral, it's white. All things being relative, the Dalai Lama's score is neon blue, and Jeffrey Dahmer's score is usually safety orange. You get the picture.

So here we are in Scoreville, and we're on our way to work. Two-foot-tall scores are hovering over everyone's head, visible for all to see. It's early in the morning, so most of the numbers are pale blue, reflecting the fact that most people got up on time (+1), brushed their teeth (+3), and locked the door on the way out (+1). A few have brighter blue numbers (worked out to a Jazzercise video, +4; petted their dog before leaving the house, +5). One or two people have electric blue scores (stopped in to visit their sick mom before work, +8; ate a rice cake instead of a cinnamon roll for breakfast, +7).

There's a bunch of people with neutral white scores (brushed their teeth, +3, but had a nasty thought about a co-worker while brushing, -3). Pale pink numbers are everywhere, too (brushed teeth/petted dog/locked door, +9, but ate two Egg McMuffins, smoked five cigarettes and forgot to take their multivitamin, -11). There are some brighter red numbers scattered here and there (snarled at the wife before storming out of the house, -14). A few bright red numbers can be seen clearly (jacked off in the shower fantasizing about having sex with the underage Olsen twins, -29, surruptitiously ate a booger, -6, and wished their mother would go to hell, -9). There's also plenty of scores that glow psychedelic orange for non-apparent reasons (the handsome, clean-cut young man who tortures and kills cats for fun, -40 billion).

So now we're all waiting in the subway. Seems like the train is late. Little by little, the sea of vaguely equivalent pink/blue numbers starts to become more red as people react to the late train (anxiety about being late for work, -2; frustration at the imbeciles who run public transportation, -4; increase in blood pressure, -3; disgust at themselves for dropping out of law school and having to take the subway instead of driving a Mercedes to work, -8). A stinky, drunken guy starts yelling obscenities for no apparent reason. Waves of red scores flow around him like ripples in a pond (contempt and loathing for another human being, -12; painful memories of Uncle Walt who would drink a fifth of Jack Daniels and make you sit on his lap, -18).

Finally the train comes (relief, +1). A fat woman stands in front of you on the platform (revulsion at the size of her ass, -4; fear that you might have to sit next to her, -7; a reminder to yourself not to eat the Snickers in your desk drawer, +1). The fat woman sees all the blue scores around her dimming, and the red scores becoming more bright, so her own score plummets. Yes, she lost three pounds this week (+8) and she wrote notes of encouragement for her kids' lunch bags (+12) and she pulled out the clumps in the cat litter this morning (+9), but the dress she's wearing is feeling a little too tight (-6), her husband hasn't had sex with her in a month (+4 for relief and -12 for shame), she didn't do the laundry last night (-5), the lipstick she bought from her Mary Kay-selling co-worker (+2) looks garish on her (-4), she just realized there's a piece of toilet paper attached to her left shoe (-7), and now the humiliation of her fatness kicks in as she sees the numbers around her get redder (-18), the memory of being the last one picked for volleyball teams in fifth grade makes an appearance (-10), she starts wondering if her husband is having an affair (-14), she remembers being dumped at her high school prom (-12), gets the sudden desire to kill her PE teacher for making fun of her (-5), a craving for a Venti Caramel Macchiato with whipped cream sweeps over her (-4), along with a the humiliating feeling that her life is shit (-30).

As the fat woman's score starts to glow fiery hot orange, most of the scores around her get even more red ("That woman is not only disgustingly obese but she's obviously a mass murderer or something - I mean, look at her number!" -5). A few numbers get more blue, reflecting a little compassion ("Poor thing." +1). A surprising number of scores get very red (smug superiority, -10).

The woman gets onto the train and sits down ("Thank God I got a seat!" +2; "Everybody is avoiding sitting next to me," -6). Like a game of musical chairs, the other commuters are frantically looking for seats, anywhere except for the empty seat next to the whale (-1 all around). A few commuters choose to stand instead of sitting next to her (some consideration, +2, some repulsion, -3, some relief, +1, some foot pain, -4). An older lady sits next to the fat lady ("Live and let live, that's my motto!" +30; "Thank God I got a seat!" +2). The fat lady is mawkishly grateful ("Maybe I'm not such a monster" +8; "Old ladies are so nice" +10; "She smells like urine" -5).

And so it goes. Minute by minute, hour by hour, scores hovering in the air above everyone's head constantly reflecting "good" and "bad" actions, experiences and thoughts. The transparentness of life in Scoreville is mind-blowing: no secrets, just a number. Everyone is quantified.

Guess what? Life in Scoreville can be harsh. For most people, the good words and deeds seem to be outnumbered by the bad ones, and most days they end up in the red. So many thoughts and actions have contradictory scores (run five miles, +8, possibility of arthritis in the knees and ankles, -8). You try to do the good thing (smile at your neighbor, +2). You try to think the good thought ("I'm basically a kind person," +2). And you feel good about your number for a few minutes or a few hours at a time, maybe even longer. But, as they saying goes, shit happens, and life has a way of evening out the score. Even a great day's progress (+36) can be wiped away (anxiety about an unexpected medical expense, -18, fear about the future, -20). A lot of people walk around with perpetually red scores no matter what they do (felony conviction in 1972, -160; recent bankruptcy, -23; ran over a dog and kept driving, -280; cheated on their taxes, -30; rationalized about cheating on their taxes, -10; never said "I love you" to their father, -143).

So many people start the day so deep in the hole (40 pounds overweight, $6,000 in debt, a toothache, a history of procrastination, bad taste in clothes, estrangement from their sister, free-floating resentment = a grand total of -275) that no matter what they do they can't seem to get anywhere. The hopelessness, the shame and the guilt bring their score even lower. Some people just give up, resigned to their low score. Many others punish themselves and the people around them, which lowers their scores even more.

And time can be an enemy, too. Take Bob. As a boy, Bob served as the community pool life guard and saved 14 lives (+6000). Now Bob's 50, and for 30 years he has not weeded his lawn (a small thing, but at -6 per week x 52 weeks x 30 years, Bob's score equals -9360). Life-saving Bob, heroic Bob, who rescued all those people so many years ago - Bob's got a fire-engine-red number hovering over his head these days.

It's time to leave Scoreville now, and what a relief. To be judged by others and to judge ourselves by affixing values - numbers - to what we say and do is devastatingly difficult, and no matter how absolute a number may appear to be, it doesn't tell the whole story.

Numbers on a scale, numbers on a calendar, numbers on a credit rating and numbers on a report card are just numbers. They tell us very little. Really.

I cannot be explained by a quantitative score. I am not a number. It would take a gallery of paintings, a troup of dancers, and a 120-piece orchestra to explain me.

No wonder I hate math.