this is your life . . .

R2-D2

Instead of the light-hearted reports I usually bring you, this is a sad story.  A story of dreams unfulfilled, of hopes shattered, of love denied.   This is a story of a man who faced the greatest sorrow a man can face, and pulled through a stronger, braver person.

It started many years ago.  R2 (not his real name of course) had a dream.  He wanted to be a sculptor.

"Morty," his mother said, "better you should be a doctor or a lawyer, even a CPA like your cousin Asa.  A mother's heart is breaking here."

But R2 persisted, and studied and studied and worked and worked.  Sad to say, he was a lousy sculptor.  But one of the many jobs he held to pay his tuition at sculpting school was that of a masseuse, and he discovered that while he couldn't do much with stone, he was a genius with flesh.     

"Morty," he mother said, "you want that the neighbors should laugh at me?  You want  that I should be a big ha-ha in the neighborhood?  For God's sake Morty, even a dentist would be better.  At least you would have a living."

But he withstood his family's pressure and became a noted masseuse.  Clients came from far and wide to be pummeled into shape.  Beautiful women threw themselves at him, but he wasn't interested.  Until....................

He saw her at the bakery counter at the deli.  She was eating a cream bun and looking at the strudel.   Her fingers were fluttering like white doves as she crammed the pastry into her rosebud mouth.  Her chins quivered adorably.  When she turned to leave, her magnificence made him weak in the knees.  This was no skinny, pampered, artificial beauty.  This was WOMAN.  300 pounds of beautiful, luscious, wobbling woman.     

To this day he doesn't remember where he got the courage to approach her.  "Would you like maybe a coffee?" he asked.  "Can I have a jelly do-nut too?" she replied.  Thus began one of the great romances of the century.

They met for lunch, they met for supper, they met for breakfast.  God how that woman could eat!  He never tired of watching her slurp and chomp and shovel the food into that perfect mouth.  Her skin was like satin, her hips blocked out the sun.  She could bench-press 250 pounds.  R2 had never been so in love.  

"Merna, you know how much I love you, please marry me."  he pleaded one night.

"Oh Morty, of course I will--pass the potatoes."

Poor R2!  poor Merna!  from that fatal day, nothing was the same.  Merna started to feel that she wasn't beautiful enough.  She decided she needed to be skinny to look good at her wedding.  So she began to diet.

In vain R2 brought her chocolate and pastries.  He tempted her with fried chicken and sour cream blintzes.  He stole all the carrots from her fridge and filled it with rum-raisin ice cream.  But Merna was determined.

Day by day she shrank.  250, 225, 200--the pounds rolled off her.  When she was at 175, R2 begged her to forget this whim.  "My angel, my goddess, you will make yourself sick.  Eat, eat."  But still she dieted, and still she lost.

Alas, Merna took off a few too many pounds.  One day when passing the deli where they met, she collapsed, faint from hunger and self-denial.  She never recovered.

R2 was shattered.  He didn't work, he didn't shave, he didn't eat.  All he could think of was his beautiful Merna--lost to him forever.

His mother was beside herself with worry.  "Morty, stop kvetching," she cried.  "You have to eat.  Your Feter Sol, may he rest in peace, never turned down a nosh, even when he was old and meshuganah.  A fine man, young like you--Merna would want you to carry on.  Get off your tuchis and live!"

Suddenly a light sparked in R2's eyes.  Yes, he would carry on.  He would carry on for Merna, but no more would he help people be thin and beautiful, from now on he had a new goal:  pastry chef!

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**Midi:  "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman"