Today I went to the Jenny Craig Weight Loss Center on Route 10, to purchase a gift certificate for my forty-year old daughter.
I opened the door and walked in – a bit more briskly than normal. A thought flashed into my mind from a decade ago: me chuckling at my mom, at age ninety as she walked up to the door of her adult day care, straightening herself, throwing her shoulders back and then striding ahead, full of pep - not unlike me going in to Jenny Craig’s – wanting to look fit and spry - an obvious non-customer.
There were three others in the Jenny Craig waiting room, all women, in various stages of weight loss I assumed. They looked good. They didn’t look like the needed weight-loss, I thought. But the feeling as I entered was definitely that of a waiting room for a shrink - eye contact avoided at all costs.
I strolled across the room and stepped up to the counter.
“Your name?” they said, which made me flinch. I sucked in my stomach. I would have liked an announcement, something on the order of, “This person is here on an errand for someone. He is not here for weight loss for himself, as is evident,” but understandably, no such words were forthcoming, so I explained my mission. I wanted a gift certificate for someone else.
I noticed that the employees, unlike those waiting, seemed quite high spirited as they went about their business of fetching food packets from a bay of fridges, which I could see in the back, beyond the counter. They were filling food plan items, perhaps for a week or so, into white plastic bags. As they scurried about they called out the names of out of stock items with a barking tone like a chef at a NY Deli. A nice touch, I thought, but not sure exactly why, or who was listening.
With gift certificate in hand, I turned to leave. I wanted to tell the ladies waiting that they looked good or keep up the good work or something like that, but then thought better of it, you know, me being seventy, and all – and then again - not really being here for weight loss for myself.
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