A couple of days ago I was out looking for eagles and was on my way home when my cell phone rang. Since hardly anyone ever calls me, I just assumed it to be my sweetie, so I pulled it out of my pocket and said, yes dear. She asked (told) me to stop by the store and pick up a pound of coffee on the way home.
Being the good spouse that I am, I said OK and I stopped at the first store I came to. Being a macho guy, I sauntered back to the coffee display and looked for a pound of coffee. I did not see a single bag or can that weighed a pound. I was pretty sure she said a pound of coffee and that is what I intended to take home. If she said a pound, that is what she wanted. I left the store empty handed. I wasn’t worried because therewas another store on the way home. I pointed old Nellie that way and away I went.
Again I marched back to the coffee and tea aisle. If they are able to put up a big sign over the coffee and tea display, I thought I had it made. Again I looked up and down. Searched the top shelves and got down on my knees to look behind the cans on the bottom shelf. Not a pound container to be found. I looked to my left, and I just knew that I had been saved by the coffee god. Here was the clerk getting ready to stock coffee. I stuck out my chest and told him I needed a pound of coffee. I did not care what brand it was or what the color of the can was. I needed a pound of coffee.
The clerk looked at me as if to ask, where have you been? He then proceeded to tell me he had been in the coffee business many years and vaguely remembered pound cans and bags of coffee. Seems he started work driving a coffee transport truck. One day he loaded his eighteenwheeler and headed down the road. According to his bill of lading, he had the same number of cans and bags as last week. He stopped for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie and proceeded down the highway. He pulled into the first weigh station and rolled across the scales. He thought something was terribly wrong with his truck’s weight. Itcrossed his mind that he had been robbed of several tons of coffee when he stopped for his coffee and pie. He called the police and then he called his boss to tell him he had been robbed. After several hours at the police station, he was finally convinced his load weight was correct. It seems that a pound had suddenly become thirteen ounces. His thirty thousand pounds of coffee now weighted only 24,375 pounds.
I finally found a couple of bags that still were labeled thirteen ounces and a bunch that showed net weight of 11.3 ounces. I got two bags because if she said she wanted a pound of coffee, I would have a pound plus a little when I got home.
After the coffee shopping trip, I got to thinking. I just may have solved the obesity problem in America. Seems the doctors and everyone is still telling me I weigh about one hundred sixty pounds. If a pound of coffee now weighs only 11.3 ounces, then I must only weigh 1,808 ounces. That would be only 113 pounds. Sounds a whole lot better than 160 pounds. Heck, if my weight can drop about 30 percent with these numbers, then everyone else should be in the same boat. So, therefore, obesity is solved.
Wonder if this is how the automobile companies are figuring our gas mileage. I never seem to be able to get what they advertise so I did some number crunching. A gallon of regular gasoline should weigh about 6.1 pounds or what we used to think of as 97.6 ounces. Now if a pound of coffee has shrunk 30 percent, I suppose a gallon of gas now weighs a tad over 69 ounces. I guess that would give me about 30 percent less mileage than I am supposed to be getting. If I were to add 30 percent to Nellie’s average mileage of 20.7 miles per gallon, then she is actually getting about 26.91 miles per gallon.
I suddenly feel a lot better than I did before my sweetie asked me to stop for a pound of coffee. Solves the mysteryof why a pound of coffee no longer produces the same number of cups as it did when we were first married. I was beginning to think she was making coffee cakes and givingthem to the neighborhood kids.
What other items have shrunk since I was a youngster? Probably my memory and mathematical abilities have shrunk considerably, so don’t put a lot of money on a wager concerning the accuracy of my figures.
When I got home, she wanted to know why I got two bags of coffee. I still say it’s because she said she wanted a pound of coffee. There is a slight difference of opinion about that conversation.
My Sister’s Brother Amos Carver Gentry
News, Pages 7 on 02/29/2012