The Bugaboo

I feel fat. Not as fat as a few months ago, but still fat.

Being overweight has always been a major bugaboo for me, save a few years--gratefully--in high school.

As a small child, until junior high, poundage never bothered me. I was raised in a family where size didn't matter and I suffered no self-image issues nor prejudice from friends. I had a good life, with lots of friends and childish confidence that sustained me. That is, it did until I entered Wilson Junior High.

Those years of 7th and 8th grade were tolerable only because I was in a special group of students (section 7-3 and 8-4 if I recall correctly) who were selected for their brains, and we all knew it. Traveling from French lab to modern math to algebra together for most of three years, we got to know each other as people, not bodies. A salesman even then, I laughed and pretended my way through school. While boys noticed other girls blossoming, I was fading into the woodwork.

The summer I turned 14 was a changing point. Left on my own, I liked to experiment with cooking on the charcoal grill I had salvaged and sprayed with engine paint. I got the worst imaginable case of food poisoning. Virtually bedridden for nine days, I lost a lot of weight. Mercifully, my best friend Linda kept me company between fits of puking. Best friendships can only tolerate so much.

By the time school started that fall, I was wearing a size 7 or 9, a far cry from the...ahh..larger size I had worn the previous year. With a new haircut and a new wardrobe (I exchanged virtually everything Mom had bought me) I was ready, or so I thought. I was so traumatized by those first two years, that I withdrew into a shell. When I was asked to the ninth grade dinner dance--by three different boys--I turned them all down, finally saying  "yes" to number four. I was glad I went. It was magical.

Throughout high school I stayed pretty slim, topping the scales at about 118. I didn't think my legs would pass muster, so I wasn't a twirler. I didn't think I was cute enough to be a cheerleader. I didn't even try. I skated along with B's when I could have had A's if I had studied. The one place I fit in was as a copywriter on the yearbook staff. Otherwise, I tended to ignore some of those I remembered from grade school, thinking they might not remember me. I didn't realize then that they might have felt the same way. How many friendships were lost?

That "remember me?' issue still remains, but I am trying to overcome it. Surprisingly, I got a boost from an unexpected source. Someone I met on a blind date and went out with exactly ONCE, remembered me. Imagine that. I am trying to reconnect, trying to make new friends, trying to use my studies of body language and my years in sales to help me along.

The pounds are still there, though slowly dissipating. The mousy brown--sometimes blond, sometimes red--hair is now a fortunately soft silver. I'm beginning to feel whole again, finding out that most people really don't care about your weight, but about your inner being. Besides, my legs aren't so bad after all, and the twinkle in my eye isn't only because of the cataract lenses.

With apologies to Virginia Slims--I'm not getting older (well, maybe a little), I'm getting better.