A Pint's a Pound, the World Around

A few years ago, at a standard medical check-up, the MA (which is my abbreviation for Medical Assistant, a job title that I made up) measured my height and weight without having me take my shoes off.
Oh, really? You might think, how heavy are your shoes? But the more significant number was my height. Because my shoes had a heel, it appeared that I was a towering five foot, four inches.
For women especially, this is a dangerous error. Any subsequent accurate measurement would make it appear that I had shrunk two inches, then I would have to fend off treatment for osteoporosis, whether I had it or not. When I got home that day, the first thing I did was measure my height against the laundry room wall with a permanent mark that I could track it from year to year.
Height also makes a difference in BMI (which is an abbreviation for something I didn't make up- Body Mass Index). That's the ratio of how tall a person is in comparison to the size of the cheesecake they ate the night before. (If I was five foot four inches tall, cheesecake would be my primary source of calcium.) A few years after the mismeasurement of my height, my doctor told me that I shouldn't lose ten pounds. I had her calculate my BMI. She subtly, but swiftly, agreed that ten pounds was an excellent idea.
Not that she knew how much I really weighed. Once again the the MA had weighed me with my shoes on.
Nancy Sherer