The bathroom scale

Unlike the kitchen scale, which is asked a fair question and gives a fair answer, the bathroom scale is asked an unfair one and answers anyway, every morning, without context and without appeal. Both mechanisms, observed in motion, behave differently under load: the kitchen scale settles in under two seconds, the needle arriving and staying; the bathroom scale wavers, climbs past the true number, retreats, settles low, climbs again, a full four to six seconds of visible negotiation before it commits to a figure. It has never once been seen to blink first. The springs inside, when the housing is removed, are nearly identical in construction to the postal scale down the hall, which weighs packages without any of them taking it personally. It is the same mechanism reporting to two entirely different audiences. One audience wants the number to be correct. The other wants it, quietly, to be kind, and it never is, because kindness is not a feature anyone engineered into a compression spring. The reading depends heavily on placement, too: tile versus bath mat versus the slight give of a floorboard, a variance of up to three pounds depending on where the machine is asked to stand. Most households own one and consult it inconsistently, guiltily, first thing, before coffee, before clothes, as if catching the number at its most honest moment. The mechanism does not know it is being asked for honesty. It only knows springs.

R. Quist