RESULTS MAY VARY--Episode One 
By HENSPURS  cockscomb@juno.com 
Haggard Housewife taps unexpected source for Growth and Energy.


Dinah Powers: That's the name the pummeled big-rig driver gave to the state
troopers when he regained consciousness at the hospital. Broken bones,
concussion, contusions, shock, lacerations. He was lucky to be alive.

I'm sure the assailant was my mother.

If I know anything, the middle name of her alias is Might.

I wonder why she gave a name at all except to take some credit for it and
maybe tell me indirectly that she was still out there.

The fifty-foot trailer, crammed with a fortune of TVs, stereo equipment and
other goodies for Funk-You's media warehouse was uncoupled at the truckstop.
She only wanted the tractor to ride around in; they're roomy.

My mom has changed her name and her appearance--don't bother looking for her
name and likeness either on the FBI's most-wanted list or among the mug shots
at your local post office. Her last driver's license lists her height at five
feet, one inch--and her weight at ninety-nine lbs.

But those are just dry measurements. Before she changed, she shuffled,
muttered and spent most of her time sitting or lying down. Limp blond hair,
sadly thin on her scalp, didn't quite hang to her shoulders; she covered up
her receded hairline with a variety of hats and wigs.

She pawned her wedding ring. Hell, it slipped off her finger so many times she
couldn't wear it.

Now, she would never be able to fit it on, except on some other parts of her
body that on normal women aren't the size of fingers.

She went through a hell of a change...

Once or twice, at her lowest, she fainted at home. The second time was in her
bra and panties which didn't fit her frame anymore and sagged like something
she had to borrow from a much bigger woman.

She's got to be about six feet, nine inches now. She probably goes about three
hundred pounds. And she isn't obese if that's what you're wondering.

It's all bone and muscle. She has hair like a rock star if she lets it grow
out. The hospitalized trucker described her as having a crew cut. But from
what I observed, her hair grows fast, maybe two inches in twenty-four hours.

Mom used me to get the way she is now, but I've got the upper hand for the
moment--and I'm taking every opportunity to enjoy my freedom and get ready for
the next round. She promised to hunt me down. I don't intend to go easily.

Not so long as I've got my once-secret weapon. The ones she made herself. And
those take some explanation:

I hide my amazing pep pills in plain sight; they look so unappetizing and
innocuous that no drug-cultured freak or professor of chemistry would ever
recognize them.

The stuff she'd been taking (more about that later) didn't seem to have any
effect for two years. It was the same with me. But once she figured out what
those unappetizing crystals could do, she went power mad and turned the house
into a veritable farm.

Well, I figured it out too, but with me penned up the way I was, there was no
way I could take advantage of that same secret until I got free. Even so,
she's way ahead of me in the fitness and fight department and I'm not safe. I
live pretty much a day at a time. I grab my fun, eats and shut-eye when I can
get it and cover my tracks for my own good.

I'm going to sleep in a wet spot, but I don't care.

Hell, there are so many of those wet spots in the sheets it's impossible to
lie down without touching one of them.

Yeah, I feel pretty good about myself if I do say so.

When my story started, I supposed the only wet spot I'd be resting in would be
a pool of my own blood.

Things changed, all right, but for the longest time, everybody who knew
me,(including yours truly) didn't give me long to live.

I guess it began with superfood.

Super food...or superfoods?

Just what in Hell are they?

Some countries, like the EU, deny there are such things or at least prohibit
labeling foods as such. Fine. Those super foods...what are some examples we've
all heard of? Well, shipmates, there's that old stand-by, spinach.

It didn't exactly blow me down, or in any other direction for that matter. The
misshapen, yet tuneful sailorman who popularized spinach isn't to blame.

Nutritionists who must have been looking at the data with only one eye
themselves made a mistake and touted it as an iron-rich vegetable that every
child in America should be raised on.

Not as nutritious as originally supposed...but decades of cartoons gave me the
idea spinach was miraculous.

And then there's dark chocolate, red wine, soy beans, yogurt...the lists go on
and on. Well, a steady diet of this fare is supposed to heal, energize, add
long life and boost performance in every department. I mean every department.
Even the ones I shouldn't have the keys to yet. Yeah, THAT department.

Stupid me...and my mom.

We turned out pretty wimpy, considering the rest of the family.

Dad died young--anemic, short of breath, chronic fatigue, fallen arches,
vertigo. A tragic case. I didn't want to turn out like him. So, I did some
timely research into the world of fitness literature.

We saw an ad in a Musculature/Fitness magazine for "NUTRA-BOOM", a new,
completely natural food supplement touted to bulk up a slight frame and kick
start the system. Oh, sure...and spinach gives you instant muscles.

"NUTRA-BOOM" What a racket! What a scheme!

Well, why not, I ask you. Go into any store, big or small and you'll see
energy-boosting drinks sold in keen-looking cans and outside those stores
you'll see those same keen-looking cans sitting around empty. There's a
definite market.

Remember friends, this is America. We put a man on the moon, irradiated the
Southwest, made obesity popular, killed the electric car...we spend millions
and millions of dollars on useless body-shaping, weight-loss cures every year
and laugh at the native witch-doctor on the dark continent with his lizard
skins and vulture claws who works for free. Unlike him, we know what we're
doing.

It turns out this crud was marketed in other places as "SUSTA-BLEND",
"NITRO-GORP", "GROWTH-BLAST" and a string of other names.

Mom and I were one of the pathetic, gullible minority who unloaded hard-earned
inheritance money for "NUTRA-BOOM" and

over the course of two years ate our way into ill-health, poverty and misery.

But then, something turned that all around...

TO BE CONTINUED