Thursday, August 19, 2004 :::
 

Chance Encounter: Fatty McFatterson meets Dances with Chocolate Cake.

By my nature I have a tendency to be cruel. We all have that tendency to be hyper-critical, even if we don’t trot it out regularly. We learned it when we were kids. We learned at a very young age that while sticks and stones could in fact break bones, words would burrow themselves into the psyche and cause atrocious damage resulting in a fucked up sense of self and expensive life-long therapy.

I was at the mall the other day and I had to hit the restroom. On the way in I passed a kid in the long, white titled hallway. This kid was a train wreck by all standards of pretty. Probably 10 or 11 years old, maybe about 40 pounds overweight and his face (and shirt) smeared with the sticky residue of an ice cream bar that couldn’t get away. He smiled at me with a happy that comes from a place too unaware and stupid to be on guard. I passed him and I heard myself say (on the inside of course) “Hey slow down there on the choco-sandwiches my tubby little friend…Fatty McFatterson…Dances with Chocolate Cake. Why don’t you jog down to the JC Penny where your mom is buying you some “husky” clothes?” Immediately I felt ashamed.

You see, I didn’t say it out loud. And it is not as if I pitched his belly and called him “Big’Un”. But in my moment of childish hyper-criticality I forgot something very important. I was a fat kid. Maybe not a Two Ton Timmy like we have roaming the malls of modern-day America, but I was certainly a candidate for husky apparel at times in my life. Even now, 30 yrs old, massive reduction in both sugar-laced products and fried foods, I am nowhere near the Collin Ferrell-GQ version of fit and attractive. But my heritage is being the big kid and that day I let myself become one of the snickering mall-herd that thoughtlessly trashes some poor fat kid.

When I came out of the restroom the kid was gone. I walked back to the store where my wife was shopping and on the way I tired not to look at my own reflection in the store windows. I was afraid that in my reflection I would see my own child-self stained with residue and dancing with chocolate cake.

::: posted by Mike at 12:38 PM