Love Handles

The most dreaded question contains just five words.

This question has ended relationships, created rifts between couples, and heck I bet it has started wars and even toppled Empires!

Even the strongest he-men when asked this question have been turned into cowering weaklings. And Einsteins have been reduced to gibbering idiots when confronted by this same query.

Ah, it is no mystery that for ages, men in general, have fled or attempted to hide (trembling I may add) behind their smartphones or magazines when asked by their spouses this damning question.

“Do you think I’m fat?”

Oh, the injustice of such a question! 

You, ladies, should know better than to even ask your knuckleheaded man his opinion of what he thinks about your appearance.  Cause nine times out of ten he’s gonna say something utterly, thoughtlessly stupid, or worse diplomatically inept.

And we all know the result of that conversation. Some unfortunate soul (translated: Him!) is going to end up sleeping on the couch!!

Ya know men are such simple creatures. And while they also worry about their weight they tend to deal with their concerns a little more privately.

(Case in point: I have never heard in my sixty-seven years around the sun some dude saying: “Bro, do I look fat?”)

So if you catch your man constantly perusing Men’s Health magazine or sucking in his gut when looking at his reflection in the mirror or fretting about his “muscle to body fat ratio” – chances are he’s worrying about his weight.

Yeah, I’m surrounded by guys who are working out all the time at the gym. Refusing to admit defeat as father time, fatty foods, and desk jobs pack weight on their bodies.

Eventually, many men give up and in doing so they come up with ways to disguise or deflect attention from their expansive waistlines. They wear baggy clothes, make jokes about their potbellies (“Hey,” (he says patting his belly) “it took a lot of beer to build this six-pack!”), and they even yank their britches so high over their bellies that their belt line starts right beneath their armpits giving a bizarre appearance of a cumberbund gone wild.

It’s so sad, really, our preoccupation with weight gain.

But Corporate America knows there are big bucks to be made off our paranoia about having a perfect body.

We are bombarded via the media about the latest fad diets. Turn on your TV and you’ll probably catch a commercial on the latest weight loss system. “Yessiree Bob! I lost thirty pounds and six inches off my waistline in my first month!” beams some former TV fatty.

Yep, no one wants to be thought of as being fat. Fat is bad. It’s gross. If you’re overweight, most folks opine that you’re either lazy or have an “eating disorder.”

Cause this is ‘Merica goddammit! The home of the brave, land of the free.

But…

You’re just not free to be fat.

Don’t believe me? Go ahead and add ten or twenty pounds to your frame and see what happens. 

Because eventually, some thoughtless clown is gonna say something.

And it’s going to ruin your day. 

***

Now, while I’m no authority on the matter, I can speak from experience because at one point in my life – I was overweight.

Not just plump, not just chunky, but FAT!

How did it happen – that I went from a skinny, slightly neurotic kid to Jabba the Hut Junior in less than a year?

Beats the hell out of me.

Looking back at all I guess my body thought that fighting gravity was too much of an effort to fight vertically and so it decided to go with a horizontal expansion. 

God help me, there is a picture floating out there in the ether of me during this period. Hopefully, it’s moldering in some landfill somewhere – but I doubt it.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see it. The picture was taken when I was in sixth grade and it shows me with no neck. Just this ENORMOUS HEAD with enough double chins to set a Guinness World record.

The disturbed expression on my face reminds me of photographs taken of famous serial killers in their teens. Blank shark eyes, coupled with an underlying hunger for something taboo.

Well, if I had a hunger back then it was probably for FOOD. You see, my mom worked at the local community college during the day, and our babysitter, Gail, who outweighed me by a couple of hundred pounds, used to clean out the family refrigerator daily.

Gail loved two things – dating game shows on TV and food. To her, we kids were just an annoyance.

Here’s a typical scene from the past:

Jim Lange (TV Dating Game Host): “So Tricia, is going to be Bachelor Number One, Bachelor Number Two, or Bachelor Number Three?”

Tricia: “I don’t know… they all have such hee…hee “interesting” qualities. Buuuut, I think I’m going to pick…”

Me: “Gail, I’m hungry.”

Gail: (munching on a chicken leg)  “Quiet! I can’t hear the TV!”

Jim Lange: “So it’s Bachelor…”

Me: (wailing) “But I’m …!”

Gail: “Shut up!”

Jim Lange: “Congratulations Bachelor Number…”

Me: …hungry now!!”

Jim Lange: “…you’ll both be whisked away to Puerto Vallarta on Pan American Airlines to stay at the luxurious …”

Gail: “Wait. Who’d she pick?”

Me: “And, it’s dinner time.”

Gail (throwing her chicken bone at the TV): “Oh No! Boo! That guy’s a loser!!”

Matty (my kid brother piping in): “We’re starving!”

Gail: “Goddammit! Both of you go to your rooms. You’re ruining the show.”

***

Sadly, my mom never addressed my weight problem during this time, as she was wrapped up in her own dramas.

The kids at Hollenbeck Elementary School were a different matter.

They teased and tormented me daily. I was called Fatso, Fatty, Chunky Chucky, and even…”Goodyear ” (as in the Blimp). One classmate acerbically surmised, during recess, that if I laid down on the ground – I’d probably roll like I was on a hill despite being on a flat surface!

You would think my public shunning would cause me to seek some kind of childish revenge – but ya know I just accepted it. 

I was fat, ugly, and unlovable – and that was that. 

The whole ugly matter came to a head so to speak one day when my Mom realized none of my clothes fit me.

So I was dragged off by my mother to Sears Department Stores in search of proper clothing.

My humiliation grew as we made our way through all the Boy’s Clothing sections of the store. Even the Boy’s “Husky” clothing line wouldn’t fit me.

Eventually, we found a pair of men’s slacks that sorta fit me – but they had to be tailored to fit my rotund body.

***

In the end, I was sent away to Military school and it was there that I lost weight and gained some self-esteem.

Now while my eventual exile to a boarding school may sound harsh to many of you, it eventually provided my salvation.

Many years have passed since then, but every once in a while I catch a glimpse of that fat kid staring back at me in the mirror.

And like breath upon glass – he fades away.