Supersize the Coffin, OK?
Why do people abuse themselves? Oh sure, they don't think that way, that by the manner in which they choose to live they're setting themselves up for misery, for an early death, but they're doing it nonetheless. No one can be unaware that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, among other deleterious conditions inimical to the human body. Drug addiction has unfortunate direct consequences, to the body, the psyche, and even more indirect, more fatal consequences. Practising unprotected sex , leads to sexually-transmitted diseases of all kinds, not the least of which leads to AIDs. Indulging in over-consumption of alcohol helps one become an alcoholic, and no one is ignorant of the fall-out there. Over-eating leads to becoming obese, morbidly obese, and untimely death. In between there's the little stuff, like heart disease and artheriosclerosis, fun stuff like that.Modern medicine is certainly helping us to cope, to live longer burdened by these diseases, but if everyone had the brains to discipline themselves in the most basic of ways, to make halfway intelligent decisions wouldn't we all be a whole lot better off? Well, yeah, sometimes people just fall into these things and lack the character to drag themselves out. Yep, shit happens. But in the final analysis aren't we responsible for ourselves, for our own well being?
In Friday's paper there was an article about a burgeoning market; the manufacture of super-sized coffins - for? well, super-sized people. Hey, I'm not talking about one of our lovely neighbours down the street, a civilian lawyer for the military who must stand about 6'-7", and very well endowed, both physique-wise and civility wise. A lovely person he is, but migawd, huge. When he first moved into his house about five years ago he struggled to remove the stump of a tree smack in the middle of his front lawn. My husband, 5'-7", brought over some tools and together they did the job, and our new neighbour looked up to my husband.
I could be talking about our neighbour directly across the street, also a lovely person. She is about my height, 5'-0", and let's see, I'd guess between 350 and 400 lbs. She is truly rotund. Humpty-Dumpty had nothing on her. She has a sweet and lovely face, is almost twenty years younger than me, a sunny personality and an interesting conversationalist (within limits). But this woman cannot even toddle down the street to pick up her mail at our communal mailbox. Is that living?
That same newspaper article mentioned above, identified the Goliath Casket Inc. which had manufactured a coffin even large than their usual; a seven-foot (wide) casket built for a 900-lb. man who died in Alaska. Most people, the article mentioned, can be squeezed into the company's 52-inch model, which is roughly the size of a regular double bed. (A standard coffin is 24 inches.) Sales at this company have been growing by about 20% a year. They sold 600 caskets in 2004; a fraction of the market. It's estimated that 200 to 300 over-sized caskets are sold every day in the United States; fifteen years ago that would have been 2 or 3 per day.
How satisfying can it be, how dignified, to be so severely incapacitated by one's appetite and subsequent girth that any semblance of normal life is denied? Does it take a genius to realize that unbridled appetite satisfaction leads to a severe diminishment of the quality of life?
posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 16, 2005
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