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Published December 18, 2006 12:29 am - We’re getting fatter. We’re staying married. We drink more water than beer. We get hurt in bed. I’m not just talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Mike Pound: Watch the tube but stay out of bed By Mike Pound
Globe columnist We’re getting fatter. We’re staying married. We drink more water than beer. We get hurt in bed. I’m not just talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton. I’m talking, of course, about all of us. Well, all of us Americans. Because we in America have about 2.7 billion federal employees who need something to do, the government puts out an annual report called the Statistical Abstract of the United Sates. The latest report was released last week and, according to The New York Times, contains some startling information. Did you know you have a better chance of getting injured by a wheelchair than by a lawn mower? It’s true, at least according to the federal study. The feds don’t say how people are getting injured by wheelchairs, but I’m guessing alcohol is involved. Of course, the other reason more people get hurt by wheelchairs than by lawn mowers could be that most people can’t get their lawn mowers to start. The story says bicycles still are involved in more accidents than any other consumer product, “but beds rank a close second.” I’ll wait a minute while you make your own joke here. One reason more people are getting hurt in bed could be because we remain the fattest people on the planet. Think about it. You have one person on the bottom of a set of bunk beds and one fat person on the top bunk. The next thing you know — BAM — you’ve got two people hurt in one bed-related accident. By the way, is it just me, or is everyone else relieved to know that even while this country is engaged in a global war on terror, our federal government still has time to keep track of bed-related injuries? The good news (I guess) on the fat front is that Mexicans, Australians, New Zealanders and Britons are “not too far behind” us. The story doesn’t say where we rank worldwide in drinking bottled water, but it does note that we drink almost 10 times more bottled water than we did in the 1980s. In fact — and I find this hard to believe — we now drink more bottled water per person than beer. All I can say is that THIS person evidently was not part of the government study. It does make me wonder why we keep getting fatter if we’re drinking more water than beer. Maybe it’s because we spend more time sitting on our Geraldos than we used to. According to the story, teens and adults spend more than “64 days a year watching television, 41 days listening to the radio and a little over a week using the Internet.” The rest of the year, I guess, we’re eating — and drinking bottled water. The study also found (and I may have made this part up) that people spend at least 45 of those 64 TV days flipping through channels looking for something to watch. The story quotes some guy from Harvard who said that nowadays, folks can get most of their information and entertainment “while remaining entirely alone.” Hmmm, that might explain why folks aren’t getting divorced like they used to. 
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