Little Known Fact #3

I am extremely self-concious about many things: my writing, my drawings, my "cartoon fingers" (as one of my best friends once affectionately called them), my social skills, etc. The thing I am most self-concious about, however, is my chubbiness and my weight.

When my grandparents (Dad's parents) were still alive and we would make our annual trip up to Michigan, there was one summer in which some local boys would come to the park just across the block from my grandparents' house and harass my sister and I. They yelled, "Chunk-EE, Chunky Soup!" at me. I had never met them before, and we were only ever in Michigan for a week or two each year.

There was at least one girl in my class in Junior High who consistently referred to me as "Heifer". Up until that time, I had been called "fat" or "fatso."

Almost every time I go shopping for clothes, some kind of disaster arises.

When I was in second grade, I really, really wanted to become a gymnast (as the Olympics were being held in Atlanta, GA that year). Mom had found a simple body suit-type thing that resembled a gymnastic unitard for me, and I was so thrilled to have something to practice my "sweet routines" in. I was so excited about this outfit that I put it on and ran down to our-neighbors'-down-the-block's house to show Audrey, the oldest girl of the family and the one I remember wanting to impress the most. She was sitting on the stoop of another neighbor's house with Amy, who was in high school. When I ran up to them, Audrey looked up at me, and burst out laughing.

"What?" I asked shyly, my face falling. "What's so funny?"

She doubled up even more, her blond ringlets framing her face. "Nothing--" she tried catching her breath--"The dog peed." I don't remember how Amy reacted. She seems to fade into the memory.

I think I knew in that moment that Audrey was lying.

When I walked into my boss's office earlier this evening to get a band-aid for my thumb, and stood there talking with her and one of my coworkers, my boss turned to me.

"Heather, you were doing so good on that diet you were on last year. You should get back on it. You were loosing all that weight..."

I clammed up and busied myself with trying to get the finger cot I'd pulled out of the first aid kit over the band-aid and the rest of my thumb.

"Is that a touchy subject?" she asked.

I sighed. "Yeah..."

She may not have meant it the way I took it. I don't know. My reaction, however, was truth: this single interchange and the little discussion that followed it made me want to curl up in a distant corner and cry.