fun | Hollis Hildebrand-Mills

In my room. Senior year at Moore College of Art and Design. Having my best friend and her husband over for dinner. The dinner I cooked in my room at twenty years of age. My best dinner was: canned green beans, noodles, ground beef and canned stewed tomatoes all mixed together. Fruit salad. Accompanied by a drink of homemade kaluah and ice cream, which was called a Polar Bear because of the color white the drink turned when I added ice-cream to the already vodka soaked liqueur. I was certain this dinner was a winner. Also my everyday ( even for special occasions ) outfit was Army Navy bells with an Army Navy turtleneck sweater. That was it. In my youth, what I didn’t know was vast. I wish I were that naive and at the same time, so certain of things as I was then.

As art students, we carried our cameras everywhere. But we only took B and W’s which we would develop and print later. If there was dust on the enlarger ( as is in this print ), we would hit it with the correct shade of spot tone. ( I had no patience with that. ) There are no photos of my best friend and her husband at this dinner. However she insisted that her late husband’s FAVORITE dinner was that canned green bean concoction.

Sadly, my best friend and I lost touch. I don’t make kaluah anymore. And I don’t do that electric fry pan green bean thing anymore either. I have grown more food-sophisticated, more clothing aware, but I have to say, nothing in the world can come close to the bursting enthusiasm of being twenty and the ever-expanding years of possibility and adventure ahead. The Army Navy sweater and pants combo, not bad either. That, I would wear today.

My husband and I have gained some weight recently, and in spite our daughter’s pleas, ”Accept that you’re fat. Don’t buy a new scale,” we bought a new scale. A digital one to replace the one with the numbers on it. The old scale had this red needle that waved back and forth with uncertainty. We both felt confident we would know our true weight with the new scale. And surely it would tell us that losing weight would be easy.

It is a Weight Watchers scale. Well, having had a career in marketing before getting into the “art world,” there had to be some sort of catch. You know, “fish while the fish are biting.” Make people sign up when they know they’re getting fat.

Doug got on first. He had no idea he was that heavy. My weight, too, was way more than the old scale told me it was. Okay, we accepted it. Didn’t join Weight Watchers, but tried not to eat the fries.

The next day, Doug came down the stairs, exclaiming he had lost ten pounds! Oh, I guess Weight Watchers figured we would join after the first weigh-in. Then it would throw us a bone of encouragement the next day-hey this weight loss thing is a piece of cake! (so to speak)

My weight continued to drop one pound a day. Even though, on a routine trip to the doctor, the scale had me demoralized again. One day, our new digital scale read me the original first day weight again, and I yelled at it, saying, “What??? I thought I was losing weight?” And then, when I got on again, the scale read the lesser weight it had registered the day before.

Artificial intelligence is making its way into our lives. We are all nervous about it. We fear the power that computers may have over us. But none of us figured on it being easily conned. Like when I yelled at the scale, it was easily bullied. How about that?