Diary Out Loud: A Partial History of a Big Guy

At my grade school, the gym teacher called me Big Guy. I don’t think he meant anything by it. Calling a grade school kid Big Guy is a bit of a weird compliment in a way, like calling a little one “all grown up.” Big Guy sort of implies maturity, the type of kid who gets picked to be a team captain and can wallop the shit out of a kickball, grown up stuff like that. I was taller and generally just bigger than most of my other classmates, hulking you could say, maybe even bulky. My pants came from the “Husky” section of JC Penney and my shirts, as far as I can remember” were always L or better. Yeah, Big Guy was about right. But, I never really considered myself fat.

My parent’s helped perpetuate the idea that I would grow into my size. Like I would somehow stop getting fatter, only taller, like rolling out play-doh into a snake. Maybe I would have done that too if not for all the Pepsi and cookies and self-delusion that I wasn’t that bad.

I played baseball, making me a kind of athlete I suppose. Soccer for a few seasons even (the team was good, named Roviso Supply, and I have no idea what Roviso supplied). Never picked last in any gym events. Not picked first either, but solidly middle of the pack, type of kid. I couldn’t run for shit or achieved in any of the Presidential fitness things (fuck you, shuttle run!) but that was the asthma, I told myself and others told me, not any kind of weight issue that hindered me there. Such lies.

There’s a picture of me, I think I’m nine years old, or so, I’m not 100% sure of my age, of me sitting up from being on the floor. The camera’s positioned at my feet, looking up toward my face. In the picture, I’m dressed in just a t-shirt and underpants, sitting up, slowly, with one hand raised fin front of me, as if reaching for a handle to lift myself the rest of the way up. The t-shirt has slipped up and there it is, the original gut. I have that distressed fat guy face as well, the straining, frustrating look of a person trying to move a heavy mistake.

If I were able to see that photo objectively, then, and if I had the wherewithal to make personal changes, I would have labeled myself fat and worked out. There was a brief time when I did work out often as a kid. I don’t remember how long this flirtation with fitness lasted, but it was in my Aunt Sissy’s basement. Aunt Sissy is now my crazy aunt, chucking broken light bulbs into her neighbor’s swimming pool, but that’s another story. Aunt Sissy had a weight bench, an exercise bike, a few scattered dumbbells and a rowing machine in her low-celinged and partially finished basement. (Her son sleeps in that basement now, in the center of room, near their cat’s litter box. Presumably, that’s where he keeps his .44 magnum. This cousin, too, is another story). I would go over there with my mom and we’d work out for a time. This habit couldn’t have lasted long because I didn’t become a gym rat or fit as a result. Other attempts to create workout habits withered as well, the fossils of which are stacked in my parent’s basement. There’s the Body by Jake sit up contraption that you sat in, a bit like a cramped chair, then leaned forward with to simulate a situp, but with stress bands to make the sit ups harder, though with this thing they should probably be called “lean forwards” not “sit ups.” Then there’s the other Body by Jake sit up device with is just a padded plank with a hinge and handles. You lay on it, grab the handles and sit up. Viola, fitness! Clearly those efforts never stuck either. Why? They were hard, dammit and I wasn’t very good at them. And I felt remarkably embarrassed doing it, like someone out there was mocking me for trying, so I couldn’t muster the courage to keep it up. Thus is the mind of me as teenager.

Maybe my parents weren’t mean enough to me to force me to lose weight with those devices, and they probably would have bought me any weight loss thingamabob available if I had shown the slightest interest in curing the fat problem I had. This whole time, I probably let them down with my weight because I realize now that they wanted me to be better with it, but they would have never confronted me directly about it because that would have just pissed me off. I owe them an apology I believe. Maybe my friends were too forgiving of my weight because, as I said, I was not a hindrance in PE, like the real fat people. And I was funny and my friends were all goofballs and not exactly the type to give you encouraging words or provide you anything heartfelt, though I probably would have made fun of them if they had, or gotten pissed because that’s just how I roll sometimes.

As an undergraduate, that’s when I began to identify myself as fat. Even had some misplaced fat pride, spouting Garfieldisms like, “I’m in shape. Round is a shape.” Har-har! And equally hilarious, in reference to ab muscles, “Why settle for a six pack when a keg is more fun?” Oh, you tubby prince of humor, will your recall of t-shirt slogans stop slaying our funny bone! Right around undergraduate is when I owned up to fatness and rolled with it. Kept on eating, kept on cracking wise. Found a friend and we together formed this kind of a fatty union where we’d head out to Denny’s after dinner and eat chicken strips and drink soda, or gorge and gorge on food on the weekend while playing wrestling video games, and together we’d joke about our fatness, or glibly say, “Yeah, I know I’m fat” then we’d make a Jack in the Box run (“One upsized Ultimate Cheeseburger combo, please….with a Sprite” because Sprite is somehow healthy and make the 10,000 calorie cheeseburger and fries better). which was maybe rebellion or something, I don’t know. Maybe we just liked chicken strips and really big shirts.

I can’t pinpoint that moment of change though where I moved from a sort of closet fat man to an openly, nearly defiantly, fat man. Was it the fat kindred spirit? A sense of hopelessness that I’d never defeat fatness even though I never actually tried doing it? I held onto this “I’m fat, fuck you” kind of mentality until I got to Mankato. It wasn’t necessarily pride that kept me drinking Pepsi and eating chicken strips because I would feint from time to time toward healthiness, like choosing pretzels instead of chips and mustard instead of mayonnaise. And I surely didn’t give myself any breaks when left alone to my thoughts, being as vicious to myself then as I can be now. So, what the hell was going on?

Massive American character flaw I suppose, hoping that through my minimal and half-assed efforts, the mountain would, if I waited long enough, come to me. There’s gotta be something else going on. I just have to write more to figure it out.