It's funny, sometimes I wonder if my parents completely blocked out the fact that as a child, my sister and I were both obese. I don't know if it is a coping mechanism to make themselves feel better or what but at times they will make comments about how chubby so and so's child has gotten. I never say anything but I just kind of think to myself "really? REALLY?!? do we not remember that I weighed nearly 100lbs in ELEMENTARY school?". It's like it's ok to talk about the issue when it relates to other people, but it's completely taboo to discuss our own issues. Swept under the rug the fact.
As I said in a previous post, being an obese child in gradeschool in the 80s, you stuck out like a sore thumb. You were the "token" chunky kid of the class, if you were overweight because you were in fact, the only one. At least I was. Now I lucked out in the fact that since I went to school with the same group of kids from Kindergarden to 7th grade, I didn't get teased to badly. Sure, the occasional "fatso" or a smart ass "Why are you so fat?" or the occasional legitmately innocent voice asking "How much do you think you weigh, anyway?" but other than that, I was for the most part an accepted little (big) citazen.
Something else that made being so big akward, was the fact that my school was so small that at times there were literally only 7 kids in my entire grade and I might be at times the only girl. It's hard to describe, but it was kind of like..since I wasn't pretty and petite, I was almost considered one of the guys, only I was to out of shape to play sports. In fact, you had to be in 5th grade I think to be on our Soccer team and at that time they had combined 5th and 6th grade into one classroom so there were about 14 kids in the entire room. I was the only kid in that room not on the team. AKWARD.
You know what the worst was, though? when we'd go on a field trip to a swimming pool, where i'd be one of the two kids wearing a shirt over my suit (the other one being my awesome best friend at the time who didn't want me to feel stupid) and the ever clever "look, it's a whale" or "Tidal wave!!" comments would come. Either that, or dear god..the one week we had to spend in fifth grade daily driving to this leadership camp where we had to do trust exercises. Nothing worse for a fat kid that trust exercises. I'm sure you've at least done a few of these yourself once or twice. The trust fall, ants on a log (everyone has to balance on a thin log and if one person falls everyone has to start over, so basicly everyone gets pissed at the person that falls off), Tarzan, (there is a small square plank in the mud and each person has to swing acrossed a hill and land on the plank until everyone is standing around squished on it and again, if one person falls off, you start over), the class sit, etc. The class sit was one of the worst. Everyone slowly backs up and sits down until each person is sitting in the lap of the person behind them.
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