Recently, researchers at Harvard and UCSD concluded that having overweight friends can significantly increase the risk of becoming obese yourself.

     Specifically, people who were socially close infected each other with nothing more than their perceptions of weight. For instance, if your friend or family member was overweight, in your mind, that did not become a negative perception for you, but was unconsciously accepted, thus you tended to weigh more or less the same as he or she.

     Don’t ask me how this all works, because I didn’t read the entire article, but let me tell you that I initiated my own set of experiments in order to test my hypothesis, entitled "The Sympathetic Weight Differentiation Study and Protocols of Implementation".

     After much, much thought and intense concentration, I realized that the obvious approach to test would be to disassociate, or separate one’s empathy from the friend or loved one.

     So, I sent the first e-mail to my brother-in-law Harry, who considers himself a hunka hunka burnin’ love. All three hundred forty five pounds. That’s one humongous hunka hunka.

     The e-mail went something like this. "Harry, ol’ buddy, don’t let the shadow from your fat ass darken my front door for, oh, say, six months. Love, Ed.

     Sure enough, I dropped fifteen pounds in three weeks. The empathy was diminishing, and I felt great. Still had some more theory-supporting evidence to collect, so my next e-mail went to my old friend Jimmie "Blubberbutt" Wilson. I told him I would be dead of cancer in a week and this was good-bye. He replied, "No way, dude. Welp,take it easy." Lots of empathy there.

     A week later, my jowls had disappeared, and those fatty bags under my eyes took on the smooth oily sheen of a Revlon model’s hollow cheeks.

     My Uncle Charlie, who hasn’t seen his feet for forty years, didn’t have internet access so I called him.

     "Uncle Charlie, how you doin’?"

     "Who’s this?"

     "It’s Ed."

     "Who?"

     "You remember...well, never mind." No empathy there, either.

     That phone call was worth another loss of twelve pounds and thirteen ounces, and I was starting to look a little pinched.

     All my picture id’s are whack now, including that ever-more difficult-to-obtain passport. I believe the time is right and my anecdotal evidence is strong enough now to publish. However, I am continuing to experience that weight loss downward spiral. Maybe it’s time to mend fences with Harry. I’ll just stop by and ask him to do lunch.