My doctor told me I had to lose weight, so I decided to get serious about it. I brought my weight out into the wilderness. Just drove until I didn’t see any signs of civilization. Then I dropped it off, told it to get lost, and drove away in a hurry. I turned up the radio so I wouldn’t hear it bawling at me, yelling about all the delicious bacon double cheeseburgers we’d shared or those ice cream sundaes as big as my head.

I went into work the next day and felt pretty good about myself, especially with everyone complimenting me on how good I looked. Then at lunchtime, my friend commented on what I was eating.

“You look good, but now comes the hard part,” he said.

“The hard part? What do you mean? I’ve already lost the weight.”

“It comes back,” he said.

“It does? How can it? I drove it really far away.”

“Dude, are you kidding me? The weight you lost was all fat. That has more calories than anything else. And with the amount you lost, it can go for months and months. It’s coming back, I guarantee it.”

“Why couldn’t I have lost some other sort of weight,” I lamented, looking up beseechingly at the ventilation system. “What about bone mass? No calories there.”

He shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

“Brains?”

“Uh, no. Best not to lose too much of that.”

“Why couldn’t I have just lost water weight?” I asked, to no one in particular.

“That comes back even faster,” he said. “It’s liquid. It flows. Duh.”

He was right and I kept a sharp eye out for my returning weight. The next day my doorbell rang. There was a box of doughnuts on my front step.

“Sweet!” I yelled. Everybody likes free doughnuts. I was about to pick it up when I hesitated. “Wait a minute. No one’s ever sent me free doughnuts before. Is that you, weight?”

A second’s pause, then a sheepish voice from inside the box said, “Yeah.”

“Get out of here. I don’t want to see you anymore.” Out of morbid curiosity, I flipped up the lid of the box. “Ugh, you look terrible.”

“Do you know what I had to go through to get back here?” it said. “Come on, let me back in. I can’t live without you.”

“I can live without you,” I said.

“Remember all the good times we had together? All that yummy food and refreshing lack of exercise?”

“You were just a byproduct!” I shouted, pointing an accusing finger at the box. “You made me feel bad about myself. People made fun of you, do you know that? Little children called me a whale, because of you!”

“Whales are beautiful, majestic animals,” the weight said, although it sounded less sure of itself now. “Anyway, what are you going to do, eat salad your whole life? Without blue cheese dressing? Are you going to eat tofu? Have you ever tried it?”

“I had it once,” I said. “Maybe I can wrap some bacon around it to give it some flavor.”

“Yeah, you do that,” it said, and snickered.

Finally, I brought it inside, since I didn’t want the neighbors to see. I tied the doughnut box shut so it couldn’t get out, but I knew that wouldn’t keep it long.

I had heard that the gym was a good place to lose weight, so I brought it there the next day. I could see why people said that: it was like a maze with all those weird machines littered about. I got lost several times. I tried to put down the weight and run away but everyone else was trying to lose weight too and since I wasn’t exercising, other people’s orphan weight kept trying to get me to adopt it. I got out of there fast.

I finally shipped my weight to a sumo wrestler school in Japan, where I hope they’ll want it. Call it my good deed for the day. I might even claim it as a charitable deduction on my taxes.