Weight Loss in the 21st Century

If you ever visit Disney World, do yourself a favor and travel to Fort Wilderness.  Most people visit the resort for the Chip ’N Dale’s Campfire Sing-a-long, or to experience the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue, but I'm here to tell you to make your way to the Meadow Swimmin' Pool.

Scene of the crime.  I may or may not have exercised
my mommy bladder here.  But I assure that if that did
happen, it was totally an accident.

Once there, do not get in the water because I peed on the water slide.  Instead, find the women's restroom by the snack shop (totally stop first and eat if you feel like having a Mickey Mouse shaped rice krispies treat)(refuse to share it with your children because *they* have their own snacks and *you* are on vacation).  Also? Make sure you are wearing your bathing suit.

This is of vital importance.

Wearing your bathing suit, with a tummy full of rice krispies treat, step inside the women's restroom, veer to the left, and check yo'self in the mirror.  

This will probably be the most defining moment of your life.

Because.

This is the moment that will chart your course in life.  This is the moment you will question exactly how deep your convictions run.  This is the moment you will count every cost, weighing the importance of your identity and good name against the prospect of getting caught stealing the most flattering mirror in the history of the entire planet Earth and probably the rest of the solar system as well.

You will decide not to steal this mirror, but go ahead and spend fifteen five minutes checking yourself out from every angle.  Check your butt.  Do it.  It looks fly.  Arms?  Sha-zam.  Mama Gut?  No kiddos up in here because you are wearing a "skirted" tankini.  (Like a mom boss.)  Your thighs are soooooo cute.  Adorable, even.  YOU are adorable.  And thin.  Almost tiny.  Pixie-like.  I'm pretty sure you could be Tinkerbell's body double.

You might start to think something like, "Dude.  This is amazing.  I know I don't really look like this but there has to be some scientific reason this mirror works this way.  Something to do with light and reflection and refraction (you are vaguely remembering 7th grade science and also a recent trip to a hand-on museum with the kiddos so some of the vocabulary is still fresh in your mind).  I wonder how hard this would be to duplicate synthetically?  I mean, this is the 21st century.

(Maybe you will take a second to figuratively google 'What century is it in 2013?' because you are in the restroom at Disney and have no literal access to google but can't quite remember if it's the 20th or the 21st.)

Isn't there an app that could make me look like this to other people all the time?  Or an eye implant?  Or I wonder if we could determine the angle of the light and figure out how to move the sun ... no, that would be impossible.  But maybe we could build a dome and position a new fake sun so that it shows us in the skinniest position possible and then we could all move inside the dome and look thin forever.  It would be just like Biodome!  Pauly Shore ... Stephen Baldwin ... Dude, Buuuuuudy."

At this point it may occur to you that living inside a man-made biodome in order to look a tad smaller is probably a lot harder than, say, watching what you eat and exercising.  So you resign yourself to a life of better food choices maybe not on the remainder of your Disney trip and daily working up a sweat, knowing at the very least this mirror exists.  There is a tiny spot of heaven on earth, and it's in central Florida.  By the time you finish up your vacation with one last trip to visit the mirror, you will be convinced of one thing:

Disney *is* the most magical place in the world.

Pretend I have fairy wings.  Just like Tink, amIright?