"What Are The Chances?"

Dateline: Vaxjo, Sweden - "Floor Collapses At Swedish Weight Watchers Clinic.

In what might otherwise would make for an entertaining skit for Monty Python's Flying Circus, can only be described as comedic irony when the second floor of the Vaxjo Weight Watcher's Clinic collapsed beneath a group of 20 program participants on Wednesday. The participants had gathered for their scheduled weekly meeting to determine how much weight each participant had shed since their last gathering. As paradoxical coincidence would have it, the participant's weight wasn't the only thing to fall that day.

"I had just stepped on the scales," said Ebba Gustavasson, a veteran attendee of the group, "when I heard a loud crack. I instantly jumped off the scales thinking, 'Dear God! What have I done!?!'" The cracking noise Ebba heard was the sound of the floor beneath her feet beginning to give way.

According to Ebba's fellow horrified Weight Watchers who were witnesses to the event, the floor in one corner of the room dropped several inches and was followed by a continuing separation along the room's walls. "Everything just sort of flew up in the air" continued Gustavasson, "and all I could think of was getting out of there."

Fortunately, the floor failed to collapse completely, allowing all of the participants to escape to another part of the building where, undaunted, they continued the evening's weigh-in. "I wasn't about to let a little thing like the floor dropping out from under me to keep me from showing that busy-body Helga Johansen that I'd lost more weight than she had," continued Gustasson. "All she does is brag brag, brag about how her deadbeat of a husband looks at her differently now that she no longer has to sleep in her garage."

Local building inspectors were on scene Thursday morning to try to determine the cause of the collapse. Asked if the failure could in any way be attributed to the fact that the local Weight Watcher's Chapter had been utilizing the facility at the time of the incident, Chief Building Inspector, Valborg Loonroth, declined to speculate. "We're looking into every possibility," said Loonroth. "We're not ruling out anything at this time. The building is not that old and should have carried any reasonable amount of weight. However, we have asked the person in charge of the Weight Watchers program to provide us the individual participant's weights that were recorded last evening, just to cover all of the possible causes. We're hoping we don't have to acquire a court order to do so."

The Vaxjo Weight Watcher's chapter is currently seeking a new location for their weekly meetings, preferably somewhere on the first floor.