Geeks in Conflict

Our beloved David Tennant (Dr. Who)

My husband John and I are geeks, and proud of it.  Knowing one is a geek means that there are several channels on television where we will find something to watch:  National Geographic, History, Discovery, Sci-Fi, and any channel that shows repeats of Star Trek: the Next Generation or the Original, and Doctor Who.  Life is simplified in many ways, just knowing these few channels.

However, this geek-hood has brought out some problems in our relationship. 

I am a quiet person who can spend a whole day without talking or watching television.  My husband is a babbler, who talks even when he is alone, and must have the television on whenever he is home.  Normally, we balance each other out.  But geek-ness has stirred up some problems.

Yes, empirical formulas

A wormhole

When we watch a show on—oh, I don’t know—say, wormholes and empirical formulas, or the history of the Hale telescope, or maybe the particle collider and anti-matter…when the show is over for hours or maybe even days, my husband is still thinking about it.  Not only is John still thinking about it, he wants to discuss it with me, and share his observations & thoughts about it.  

It is what it is.

Obviously, this is a one-sided discussion, an inequality, if you like.  I listen to him for minutes, maybe as long as five whole minutes.  But somewhere in that time frame, a hand reaches up to a switch in my brain and clicks it to “off”.  Then I am blankly looking at him, nodding as if I understand and care.  In a short while, I start looking around the room.  After that, I go to the bathroom.

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Bless his heart.  He knows what is happening, but the enthusiastic desire to teach and share his passions in life override that part in his brain that should have an on/off switch but doesn’t.

Yesterday was prime.  We were watching a track event with javelin throws and such.  John started talking about how certain animals could be trained to excel at these track events.  He speculated about cheetahs in sprints, gazelles in the hurdles, gorillas in shot-put, and…I stopped listening.   Only after a few minutes, did I realize he was asking me, “What do you think?”

1980 - awesome movie

Blank, I gazed at him and tried to rebuild the sentences building up to that question.  The only thing I could come up with, as that hand in my brain struggled to find the switch and turn it on, was, “Well, John.  The only things animals are really interested in are eating and mating…”  Then I looked at him, seeing if that was a good answer.  John, ever so much like our granddaughter Sunshine, nodded and said, “That’s probably right.”

Then John got up and went to the bathroom. 

It is not our fault! Science confirms this!

It is not our fault.  The truth is finally out, and I feel such relief.  Since I hit 45 years old, I have had this sense of guilt and failure

. 

I have had to work on staying a size 8-10 for my whole adult life.  There have been years when I flirted with a size 6 or even less, but those were stressful years when I was more concerned with working than I was with eating.

Then the migraines became serious, and the neurologist had me try one anti-seizure medication after another.  Each one was a serious metabolism killer.  Then menopause came along, and the suppressed fat cells inhaled deeply.  “Ahhhh.  Finally.  Now it is our turn.”

But, HALLELUJAH!  An article has appeared on the scene from Dr. Laurence E. Dahners, senior author and professor in the Department of Orthopedics in the University of North Carolina.  He has determined the following:

“I think it’s a fairly common human experience that people find themselves to be wider at the age of 40 or 60 then they were at 20,” said Laurence E. Dahners, MD, senior author of the study and a professor in the Department of Orthopaedics in the UNC School of Medicine. “Until recently we assumed that this was caused simply by an increase in body fat.

“Our findings suggest that pelvic growth may contribute to people becoming wider and having a larger waist size as they get older, whether or not they also have an increase in body fat,” Dahners said.

The pelvic width of the oldest patients in the study was, on average, nearly an inch larger than the youngest patients. This one-inch increase in pelvic diameter, by itself, could lead to an approximately three-inch increase in waist size from age 20 to age 79. If the rest of the body is widening commensurately, this might account for a significant portion of an increase in body weight of about one pound a year that many people experience during the same period, Dahners said.”

Their results confirmed that the width of the pelvis, the width but not the height of L4 vertebral body, the distance between the femoral heads, and the diameter of the femoral heads all continued to enlarge after skeletal maturity.

In Particular, the fact that the pelvic inlet also widened is evidence of true pelvic growth rather than simple appositional bone formation, Dahners said.  The pelvic inlet would be smaller if appositional bone formation were taking place, he said.

This begs the question:  If my pelvis is growing wider, doesn’t that mean my butt is wider? 

Also, since the spine tends to compress as a result of gravity, stress, and regular doses of stupid actions, doesn’t that mean that all the organs and gooey stuff within the ribs will also compress?  I mean, where would it go?

What would happen..

Think about this image:  You take a balloon and fill it with water.  When you press down on the balloon gently, the balloon will spread out.  Press too hard, well, that’s a different story, of course.

So, not only is the butt getting wider, but the abdomen is protruding since there is no place else for it to go, right?  Everything, baby, is heading south and out.  It is a no-win situation for all of us.

There is no excuse for the flabby arm thing, though.  Maybe Dr. Laurence Dahners will discover more about that problem.