Commentary by H.G. Listiak

Friday 10/10/2003

Welcome to my world, where any time you walk in the mall, or go to a restaurant, or fly, or even play golf, it's not difficult to notice that obesity is an American problem. For those over-portly people, all facets of life can be a little tough. As the fat force continues to live large, consequently, they continue to die large, which is causing major problems for the funeral industry. They now report that 20% of Americans who go to that great supper plate in the sky are frankly, too fat for the funeral. The normal casket is only 24 inches wide, with the average burial plot also only 2 feet across. Woodlawn Cemetary in the Bronx, has stretched the plots to 4 feet across, but a lot of cemetaries don't have room to expand that much. It's been a hassle for the coffin industry, since they just can't pack someone's dearly departed in like overstuffed luggage and sit on the lid. So now we've got casket makers out with a 44 inch double-wide model that can handle up to 700 pounds of dead weight (no pun intended.) But it's very expensive and loses what the funeral folk call it's integrity. This also becomes a problem for hearse makers, who have to widen the rails to handle the double-wide coffin. Even creamatoria can't handle bodies who may be in the four to five hundred pound range. The International Size Acceptance Association is upset. They say the funeral people have simply not done enough, saying that people have been getting larger for 30 years and the industry is lagging far behind in adapting to the double wide dead. The funeral industry disputes this, saying they have reacted properly to the super sizing of America. I smell a lawsuit, and even though it's a dead issue, it could be a grave situation, as I see it ... I'm H.G. Listiak.