UMMM…I MEAN, “FAST” …

* * * Gina Barreca, after just ONE WEEK of taking SlimProf!

* * *

“I sincerely apologize if you are receiving this e-mail in error,” said one of the many messages I opened this morning. I usually delete the generic-emails, the ones that are not actually addressed to me, first thing — even before I have a cup of coffee. This is because I do not want or need to be conscious to deal with them. Heavy-lidded and yawning, I push the “trash” button automatically while the fog in my brain begins to clear.

For some reason (too little sleep? Distracted by the cats who have decided to attack each other suddenly?), I make a horrible error and OPEN one of these missives. Confronting my practically somnolent self, is the following message: “I have saved my family and my life. Because of this I have made a commitment to get the word out on this life-changing product, so that it will be available to everyone.”

The words sank into my consciousness despite all desire to block them out. I can’t blame my easily won attention simply on the lack of caffeine or the inability to avert my eyes once I start reading; I can’t even blame it on the same prurient kind of curiosity that makes me read Weekly World News while waiting on the grocery line. At least that’s fun and the only folks who truly believe what’s printed are ones who have nurtured Bat Boys in their own respective belfries.

What hooked my attention in the unsolicited mail was the use of the pathetically personal introductory material, as quoted here directly: “My name is Dana Hampton. I’m a married 37-year-old mother of 4 who was a happy size 7 before my first child and who grew 4 dress sizes larger by my fourth pregnancy. I didn’t like the way I looked and I didn’t like the way I felt. … just didn’t want to live and have to face another day.”

Boy, can’t you just see her? Wearing a flowered muu-muu and fake-leather shoes bought from an ad in Parade magazine? Hair lank around her pudding face, cheap earrings and bracelets dangling in order to detract from her puffy contours, always surrounded by pale, round, gooey-eyed children circling her like mushrooms? Her house is always sticky, the floors are never clean, the smell of sour milk permeates the air. Television buzzing in the background like flies? She is on the very verge of despair, dreams of youth and beauty gone, passing her sadness onto the next generation, remembering when life was good as a size “7”?

So what did she need? A supportive community? A good foundation garment? Counseling? A check-up with her physician? Birth control? A job to get her out of the house and into a world where her skills and intelligence could be validated? Exercise? Adequate child care? Renewal of her spiritual life? A marriage-encounter weekend? Fewer Little Debbie cupcakes?

Turns out all she needed to go from stuffed-duck to swinging-swan was a few pills she got off the Internet.

I kept reading. God help me, I kept reading, picturing this lady and hoping that she did indeed find happiness through the use of non-FDA approved vitamin supplements. Having invested this much energy, I wanted to read the happy ending in a hurry.

“The greatest compliment I got was from my husband,” she explains. “He told me that I ‘looked younger.’ He said my face looked especially younger, ‘you look like the real you!‘”

Naturally by this point I am cheering along, relieved at the sense of love brought back from the brink, as well as of a life regained and made whole. “Recently,” she continues, building to the finale, “He told me,‘Olivia, you really look great, you look like the young girl I kissed at our wedding.‘” The next line (I’m not making this up) is “I said, ‘WHAT?‘”

I’d be saying “WHAT?” too. Wouldn’t you? Not because her husband has rediscovered he loves his wife because of her dress-size. Nor would I suggest that saying “you look like the young girl I kissed at our wedding” could easily imply the husband was pulling a Sonny Corleone (and kissing a young girl not necessarily his bride at his wedding), but because the name given by the woman at the beginning of the e-mail, as you remember, is “Dana.” Who the heck is this Olivia?

If you can’t trust people revealing their life stories in order to sell you tacky weight-loss drugs, who can you trust?

The lesson? No reading before the first cup of coffee.