Driving the Car

As a result of what I do I spend a LOT of time driving - to pet sit jobs, to rehearsal, to the barn and to other volunteer stuff. I usually listen to public radio, but there are times that I switch over to commercial radio talk to get a less soothing tone. I almost always hear at least one thing that has me shaking my head, often the ads.

Last night was no exception. I was coming back from rehearsal and needed something more abrasive than the show I had on so I went to a commercial signal. The radio show is not a screamer, but it had the ads and other expected interruptions.

The ads did not disappoint. The one that most got my attention was for a plastic surgeon. Supposedly this practice uses a less invasive process for removing excess fat from under the skin. They asked whether the listener would like to look leaner in various body parts – neck, midriff, butt and many of the usual places that people feel they are too fat. Most of them made sense as places where someone might be willing to pay for having less fat.

But they lost me when they dangled the prospect of getting all that ugly fat out of the knee.

It’s not that I’d expect people to want a fat knee, though I wouldn’t mind borrowing a little for over my bony knob for yoga classes. A truly fat knee, in an otherwise normal leg, probably makes it hard to find well-fitting pants.

But I don’t understand how anyone would have a fat knee without a bunch of other, larger fat body parts like legs. Nor why they’d worry about getting just the knee liposuctioned (or whatever this surgeon does). It seems to me that if you have a fat knee, there is some other part of the body that you would want to have worked on first.

I may be wrong - perhaps fat knees are a serious issue. I haven't seen it myself, but I spend a lot more time looking at critters than peoples' knees. So I could be missing something important.