Meredith has elephantiasis. That is, a burden of elephants.

For years her neighbours, friends, family and students have been offering up stuffed, marble, magnetised elephants, even elephant shaped waffle makers…But you see, Meredith doesn’t even like elephants. She could have mentioned this, of course, but she knows that this imagined fondness of hers for elephants is proof of her jolliness, a huge joke against herself, and she knows that a jolly fat woman without jolliness is left with only one adjective.