“Mom, am I fat?”
“No…its just baby fat.”
It wasn’t.
I was fat. Not kind of fat. Not chunky. Not big-boned. And definitely not baby fat. Baby fat is allowed till the age of what? Five? I was at least 10 when I asked my mom this infamous question. And the truth is, I was fat. Like ate spoonfuls of sugar at one time, fat. Stole candy bars from the grocery stores, fat. Fat fat. Scurrying barefoot on the kitchen counter tops looking for the elusive sugar that my parents “conveniently misplaced” two weeks after I was discovered in a corner eating spoonfuls of sugar, fat.
Those bastards.
Walking into the grocery store on that autumn afternoon just seemed like the right moment to ask. I probably was going to steal a Snickers bar anyways, and that should have been proof enough but I wanted to hear it verbally. I wanted the words to ring in my ears; I wanted them to sear the fat right off of my love handles.
However, my plan backfired:
“No…its just baby fat.”
Wait…what? My mom just lied. Straight to my face. Wasn’t my mom, if anyone, supposed to tell her child that while yes, they had a stellar personality and yes, they were super funny, that sadly they were fat and kind of going through an, um I don’t know, ugly…I mean, awkward stage? How could she? How could she just lie like that?!
I stood there, shocked, in the middle of the crosswalk in my bright orange leggings with the elastic band since I couldn’t technically fit into jeans until I was 14, over sized black sweater splattered with bright orange pumpkins and candy corn (to divert ones eye from the fat, of course), and bright orange pumpkin bow placed strategically in the middle of my disproportionate head. Yeah, I was that kid.
My mouth opened, but there was no food to shove into the black hole.
“Nuh uh!”
But wasn’t that what I wanted to hear? Didn’t I want to hear that yes, I wasn’t fat? That yes, it was okay to steal candy? Yes, Cheese Whiz was a valid form of calcium. And yes in actuality, it’s vegetables that clog your arteries and fuck you up.
It was in this moment that I learned a valuable lesson: Mothers lie. A shit ton. Years later (and pounds skinner) I confronted my mom about this pivotal question in my chubby childhood:
“Oh god, you were huge!”
“I knew it. You lied!”
“Technically yes, but you were skinnier than your brother.”
I'm sure there were some semantics in there somewhere. No?!
ReplyDeleteYou were seriously the black sweatshirt candy corn kid? With the orange bow? Did you have a spiral perm too?
ah brilliant. I was the gorky kid, with super long limbs messy hair and giant glasses.
ReplyDeletesomething must have clicked in the end if you shifted all of your 'baby fat'!
(daydreamsfromfeef.blogspot.com)
I desperately wanted people to tell me I was fat when I was in high school and college, because I thought it would shock me into loosing the weight I thought I needed to loose. Looking back, it's probably a good thing no one did, since I wasn't actually fat, just bigger than the anorexic ballerinas I was surrounded by.
ReplyDeleteUhhh...what
ReplyDeletehttp://awkwardsexandthecity.blogspot.com/2011/09/i-was-sooooooo-cool-when-i-was-younger.html
I'm with Kevin...
ReplyDeleteHilarious! I thought I was the only kid who wore the elastic band stretch pants in bright colors. I couldn't fit jeans and I remember a kid asking me why I didn't wear jeans like the rest and me saying something to the effect of "because I don't like them"....#sigh
ReplyDelete