Hindsight Chapter II

Hindsight Part II
June 14, 2011
Like I said… I didn’t want to be skinny, just NOT FAT.
Fat was something I was used to, and it really didn’t bother me. I was “normal-sized” until I was in the third grade, which was probably my least favorite year of school… ever. I had an awful teacher, and if I could have psycho-analyzed myself, I probably would think that, if I were a bit older, she would have driven me to drink. She upset me daily, and, not knowing any other way to make it better, my grandmother fed me until I felt better. I knew that, when I got home, my Granny would have my favorite thing in the world, rice pudding, made just for me. When I started to (as my grandmother would say) “thicken up”, the kids teased me about being fat. I got over that teasing quickly, with my mother’s help. She challenged me to resist being “fat and…”, that is, not allow myself to be called fat and anything. If kids tried to call me fat and stupid, fat and stinky, fat and anything, I just let them know I was just fat. Period.
From that point on, I worked diligently on my mind and my spirit, and I didn’t let being fat bother me. I was still teased daily, but I couldn’t have cared less. I still played kickball and skated better than anyone in my neighborhood, but I also ate well, so the weight continued to add on. As a teenager, some kids were relentless. There were people who had to remind me every day that I was fat, like I didn’t have a mirror. I made it through those years fairly well anyway, and by the time I was an adult, I decided that, at some point in my life, I would do something about the weight. I tried diets, even Weight Watchers, but nothing really worked.
One of my funniest, but really enlightening, “fat” experiences happened when I was a new teacher at Dinwiddie County Junior High School. I was standing on yard duty with one of my colleagues, when a kid came by and said, “Two fat teachers standing together!” He laughed (and, quite frankly, so did I). My colleague was livid! She grabbed the kid by the arm, and started dragging him to the office. I followed, trying to reason with her, but she wasn’t hearing it. The vision of her dragging that kid struck me as amazingly funny, and it was all I could do to keep walking while my laughter was becoming uncontrollable. When we arrived at the office, she was so angry, she was sputtering, and I was laughing so hard I could hardly talk. I finally managed to tell the principal what had happened, and he promised to caution the kid about saying hurtful things, and let him go. I was satisfied, but she was furious, and I couldn’t for the life of me, figure out why.
I followed her back to her classroom, and I asked her, “When you look in your mirror, what do YOU see?” She looked at me, opened her mouth as if to say something, and burst into tears. I was so shocked, I couldn’t speak. She proceeded to tell me about how thin she was growing up, and how awful she looked, now that she had gained weight. From there, she talked about how she didn’t have any friends, couldn’t get a date, and was just miserable. She told me how angry it made her when the guys we worked with talked about hanging out with me, dancing, playing cards and drinking beer, but not one of them had ever asked her out or even told her we were going out until after we had gone. When she said it was because she was fat, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it really wasn’t. She dressed sloppily and she was mean and nasty to everybody, and that was why she didn’t have friends and couldn’t get a date. She talked about the way I dressed, “fancy every day” was the way she put it. I told her that I made almost all my clothes, and that I dressed the way I thought teachers should dress. The kids expected and respected it. Although she and I were almost the same age, both single at the time, and our salary was the same, she told me she didn’t have the kind of money I had (I don’t know where she got her information), and she couldn’t afford to dress the way I did. I assured her that she could, but she wouldn’t listen, and I gave up trying to convince her. I thought for a moment and then said, “I get up every morning, get fully dressed, and look in the mirror. When I don’t like what I see, I call in sick and go back to bed. As you know, I don’t miss any days. When I decide I don’t like what I see, I will change things.” I walked out without another word.
Why am I saying this? Years passed, and I had done nothing substantial to change things. Interestingly, a similar schoolyard comment was my impetus to lose the weight. One afternoon in the early spring of 1992, I went to my daughter’s nursery school to spend time with the kids. We played the regular schoolyard games, jumped rope, and I pushed the kids on the swings. As the children headed for the door, one little girl who was walking with my daughter said to her, “Your mama is so much fun… but she’s so fat!” My daughter just smiled and said, “She’s fun and fluffy!” It didn’t bother her, but it bothered me. I had gained weight when I was pregnant with my son, and I hadn’t lost any weight after he was born. He was over a year old by that time, and I had gotten comfortable with the weight I had gained. That comment threw me. I didn’t mind the off-handed comments of small-minded people, but I wasn’t about to let my children have to endure those comments. I was already older than most of their friends’ mothers, and I was determined I wasn’t going to be bigger than they were, too.
I decided, that day, that it was time to change. I started to research the possibility of gastric bypass because I knew my cousin had the surgery and she had lost a lot of weight in a very short time. I didn’t know it, but my sister had been doing the same research. We had gained the weight together and this was our chance to lose the weight together. I knew I could never get her to exercise with me, but she would lose weight. I would make sure that she did. My unstable blood pressure, for which I had taken medication since I was nineteen, was the reason my doctor recommended the surgery. I had exercised and modified my eating habits, but my blood pressure simply would not go down and stay down. My doctor assured me that this condition would improve if I lost weight… that control would trump heredity (since my mom and dad had high blood pressure). I wasn’t sure I believed him, but it was worth a try. Really, I had nothing to lose, except the weight.