It’s been my concern for several years, ever since the dawning of The Flabbifying of America, that people are carrying around too much weight.
    A recent visit to the Golden Corral’s all-you-can-eat buffet in Rio Rancho convinced me that an abundance of food addicts people who become so overzealous that they gorge on whatever’s available, prompting enforcement of the painfully simple rule: take all you want, but eat all you take.
    The tech age has rendered many of us would-be mechanics helpless. For that reason, my ego got a boost when I was able — in the period of six months — to diagnose the same automotive problem — twice.
    Currently, my diagnostic skills and automotive knowledge consist of the ability to say, “That’s the tire that’s flat” and “The mechanic assured me all it needed was a quart of turn-signal fluid.”
    But let’s get back to the diagnoses:
    Most of us have heard about the immigrant from Mexico who was the last one to arrive at a sold-out major league baseball stadium and needed to perch on the flagpole to watch the game.
    His elation became apparent when he later told his family, “Everyone in the stadium looked toward me and asked, ‘Jose, can you see?'”
    Puppy love, which can lead to a dog’s life, struck me in my early 20s when I became enchanted by a midwestern woman with whom I had much in common: we both thought she was great (but I suspect she loved herself more — than I loved her.)
    Though the courtship ended, on mutual terms, with no yelping or growling, spending time with a big-city girl was educational, and it created a host of experiences which I likely would never have pursued on my own.
    It was in 1962, when a weekly paycheck of $90 was enough to raise a family. Credit cards were unheard of, except for specific department stores such as Sears and Wards.
    Growing up in the early days of television, when “Perry Mason” was king, I became addicted to courtroom activity.
    For those under 50, let me explain that Perry Mason, played by Raymond Burr, was a weekly hour-long television serial in which Mason, a defense attorney, never lost a case. So convincing, so theatrical were his closing arguments that often someone in the audience would shout, “I can’t take it anymore. I did it. I killed him and his body’s decomposing in my locker.”
    One thing that was common, though unpleasant, in elementary school was being thought of as a wise-guy. But for a while, I had that reputation at Immaculate Conception School when Sister Aggravnia prepped us second-graders on words and their opposites.
    When it was my turn, and the nun asked for the opposite of “light,” I answered “heavy,” only to be razzed by my classmates for not having said “dark.” But why wasn’t my answer just as germane as the others?
    “Never do I ever want to hear another word. (There isn’t one I haven’t heard.”)
    Eliza Doolittle, the heroine of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady,” which came from “Pygmalion,” by George Bernard Shaw, said/sang that pronouncement when being courted by Freddie Eynsford-Hill, at a time when Eliza wanted action, not words.
    To boast, honestly, that you’ve already heard all the English words would be quite a feat, even a hundred years ago, when “Pygmalion” was written.
    Seeing somebody from my childhood, Monday, at a local restaurant, piqued my memory about growing up in the Railroad Avenue barrio.
    I saw Johnny Sandoval, who’s visiting from California. He’s the oldest of a family, mainly males, which includes sister Vickie and brothers Narciso, Chris and Lawrence. With them at El Rialto were their mother, Bertha Sandoval, and Lawrence’s wife Antonia.
    We were gassing up at the Allsup’s on Mills and Hot Springs when a woman who would normally have ignored me suddenly made me feel important.
    It’s the kind of importance one feels when sought out by a child who thinks of you only as a person who’ll order magazine subscriptions or “buy a raffle.” A raffle, by the way, is the money-making procedure, including a drawing. A ticket or coupon is not a raffle.
    A former student recently told me about a job he’s held for several years. It involves writing news and speaking in public — two things I used to teach.
    I was about to compliment him when he said something that made me wince: “I owe it all to you.”