The Magical Powers of Herbalwife

Certain names & numbers that been changed in this story for anonymity, but other than that, it is a true story.

Groc shopping. One of my favorite social activities, wandering through the grocery store. I have a lots of special groups/categories of friends, and one of them are the people who work at the groc store. I know tons of people there by first name. Chatting with my groc friends and the discovery of new stuff to try eating. Eating and chatting, my two favorite things, well, that just depends on what day it is.

I stopped at the free-in-miniature-quantities coffee and defective cookies stand (They were going to throw them away anyway, selection rejection collection confection ejection). One of my favorite Groc-ese is Eilsel, and her sister happens to be working in the bakery section this fine day. We begin chatting near the F-I-M-Q coffee & aforementioned cookie stand. She tells me that Eilsel is working at the groc store today and that she is doing well in her new business venture, outside her normal groc store job. This info is new to me. So later I find Eilsel's checkout line.

I asked Eilsel what her new business is, and she tells me that she has started using and selling "Herbalwife", and I tell her that my wife used to sell Herbalwife too. And then she tells me an amazing story of how she has lost 40 lbs and 75 inches. I am utterly dumbfounded, shocked and amazed. I look straight up in the air and then back down to her, and exclaim, "Wow you think I would have noticed you being that much taller than me before and then losing 75 inches. That's like (pause for quick mental math) 6 ft 3 in!"

By this time she is cracking up laughing, probably another side effect of Herbalwife. So I thought of a logical scientific explanation and told her, "I bet it was like magic or something. Or maybe you secretly put it in the drinking water for the entire city of Borger and now everyone has lost 75 inches (depending on how much you drink BORGER's water – hint: taste) and people come from miles around to see the little tiny teenie people of Borger and we all became scared of the giant people invading Borger and that's why we built the walls around the city to keep the giants out when we could have earned a lot of money from tourism."

Her laughter, which got really bad when I mentioned that thing about the shrinking people and foreigners (non-Borger-ese) being giants, finally subsided and she said, "No, silly, I lost 75 inches of body measurements all together, you knew what I meant." I asked her if I could write this story and blog it, and she said yes, and I even confirmed that she didn't have to proof the story first.

Such a trusting soul. Another bad side effect of Herbalwife.

Which now makes me think, if you measure ENOUGH body parts, I'm sure you could easily lose 75 inches just by dropping a few pounds.

Poor math skills, another bad side effect of Herbalwife.