BEASTLY TALES

STRESS COMPENSATION

Oscar Oddball always ate a lot,
Whether it was cold or very hot.
He’d say in winter, “I’ll diet in summer,”
“Dieting in winter is a real bummer.”
But when summer eventually came,
For his fatness, who was to blame?
“In winter I’ll lose weight,”
“Being cold burns calories I’ve ate.”
And so Oscar did eat, and then ate more,
Metabolism turning excess calories to a fat store.
So, why did Oscar so excessively eat?
Why could he not turn down the most banal treat?
His eating proclivities were in such a mess,
Entirely due to unrelenting stress.
Yes, stress is a most unwelcome bed fellow,
Stress, so commonplace, makes life not mellow.

Nikita Nonsuch barely ate a thing,
On his ribs a xylophonist could ping.
With Nikita his hunger was hidden,
When, at meal times, it should have been bidden,
He always said, “I’ve no appetite,”
Indicative that something wasn’t right.
When his wife, in an effort to coax,
Nikita would rattle out fat people jokes.
Was his metabolism just out of whack?
Was he just too tough a nut to crack?
But there you have it, most every day,
His robustness just seemed to waste away.
When questioned as to why no appetite,
He responded that he didn’t feel right.
No, he wasn’t ill in the metabolism sense,
But unrelenting stress made him too tense.
Yes, omni-present stress that never let up.
Like trying to stabilize an over-filled cup.

So, one eats too much, the other too little.
One bulging with fat, the other thin and brittle.
And ostensibly due to identical cause,
Stop and think. It can give one much pause.
But, stressful, life has always been,
For some more-so, to levels obscene.
And now-a-days it seems to be getting much worse.
How fine it would be if this trend would reverse.
But it won’t whilst humanity is in charge,
So one should decide, should they be thin or large.