Fat Page 5

  Bullying is about power, and most, no matter their size, will happily take power given its therapeutic effects on some internal ill. In particular, grade school bullies are usually the fat kid that just uses his weight advantage to pound kids. The bully just started out eating too much, got fat, got called fatty-fat-fat, then got bitter, ate more to feel better, got even fatter, then realized it’s easy to overpower kids that weigh half your size. And kids will respect someone that can beat up other kids. I bet Xander is real popular now. Suddenly kids become impressed rather than disgusted when Xander eats four bologna sandwiches for lunch. Xander now gets picked first for recess football because he can carry would-be tacklers into the end zone as if they were kids hanging on the sides of a train headed to Darjeeling. And with all that positive feedback, now Xander finds it hilarious pounding on a kid who loves Peanuts.

  “Is the kid Xander beat up coming to clinic?”

  The teacher shook his head. “We sent him to the hospital. Xander sat on his face for a while and some kids said Sam might have stopped breathing for a while.”

  I almost laughed aloud. A kid almost killed by smothering fat rolls. Xander sent to death row for murder in the first by a fat-ass ass. The kid should’ve tried to fight Xander by continually shuffling away just out of reach; Xander would’ve no doubt died of a heart attack if he chased the kid more than half a block. Xander looked like he could die of a heart attack just from walking to a soda machine. He was a walking heart attack in grade school.

  It is too bad that grade school bully weight will eventually became a disadvantage. Puberty will hit and it will turn out that fat weight is very different from muscle weight. When other kids hit puberty, they will gain muscle mass because their intake is balanced enough to create good mass rather than having to store bad mass. Xander’s state of intake will make him a super-sized storage facility for bad mass. I bet puberty for Xander will mean acne, nocturnal emissions and non-stop fast food. Topical benzoyl peroxide will tame the acne, masturbation will offer release from the emissions, but his weight will never meet the salve of diet and exercise. It will become the festering sore that only gets worse. I bet puberty for little Sam will be developing a Napoleon complex and starting to lift weights with an angry passion, then quelling his internal ills by beating on fat kids when he develops into a fire hydrant of a linebacker. Xander’s just getting his time in the bully sun before it’s too late.

  The teacher started pulling Xander out of the room.

  “Say hi to your mom for me, Xander.”

  “Okay, Dr. Grant.”

  JUNIOR

  When Xander rolled in for his seventh grade physical, it was apparent he was dedicated to going the route of bigger being better. For medical purposes, kids’ weights are measured in kilograms; Xander was eighty kilograms when he should’ve been eighty pounds. And now he was sporting Buddy Holly glasses. And going out in public in dirty sweatpants and a T-shirt with a smiling whale cartoon on the front set under the words “Whales are fun!”.

  Seventh grade is the start of some heightened social awareness – puberty starts for most, the opposite sex become noticed, and being cool stops being about baseball cards and Barbies. Seeing Xander in sweats and a marine wildlife tee as a seventh grader was concerning.

  “Hey Kate, how’s Xander doing?”

  “He’s doing real well.”

  Xander had his head buried in a book entitled “Marine Biology”.

  “What activities is he doing now?”

  “He’s really taken to swimming. He’s goes all the time at the club.”

  It looks like he needs to go more. Whatever calories he’s burning by swimming is just mist evaporating off an ocean of eating, for sure. Fat does float, though. I imagine him floating on his back in the shallow end peeling into a Snickers bar, looking like an otter cracking into a clam.

  “How’s he doing at school?”

  “Really great. Ever since he watched something on whales on National Geographic, all he talks about is wanting to be a marine biologist. I mean, his bedroom is wall to wall pictures of turtles, whales, manatees, sharks…”

  Kate went on for another few minutes naming more sea wildlife. Curious that she thinks I don’t get it that Xander is now obsessed with marine biology, and that the only way to convince me is by listing animals that live in or near oceans. It’s always good to have interests but becoming this obsessed, this early, turns Xander from the “fat kid” to the “weird fat kid into whales”. Kids are just going to call him a whale. It is really concerning that either Xander doesn’t see the obvious fodder or that he doesn’t care.

  “…and sea anemomes. It’s really given him motivation to do well in school. I even brought his report card to show you.”

  Kate fished around in her Dior purse for a while. She had on matching Gucci shoes and a revealing Gucci tunic. I didn’t know Gucci made anything besides purses.

  “I can’t find it here. Oh, Xander do you have it? Show Dr. Grant your report card, Xander.”

  Xander reached into his book and fished out a slip of paper, holding it out for me without lifting his head from his book. I took the report card. All A’s, and one D. In gym.

  “What happened in gym, little buddy.”

  “Gym is stupid.”

  “Why is it stupid?”

  “Because it is.”

  Preteens are usually jerkfaces to any adult, especially to their doctor, but this smelled different. It smelled familiar.

  I knew a kid named Michael Ferry who was in most of my gifted classes in junior high – we called him “Fat Ferry”. He was however a surprisingly popular kid for being a five-four, two hundred thirty pound scumbag. Scumbag in the sense that he wore the same zebra striped pants everyday with an array of T-shirts that seemed to be more sweat and grease than cotton. He was undoubtedly popular from the fact that he dabbled in smoking and selling weed.

  Every fall, every seventh and eighth grader would have to run the mile for a grade in gym. There would be some training runs for a week or so to gear us up for the final run, and the hope was that the final run would be a personal best. Better times meant better grades, and slacking was punished with a redo of the mile, so there was good motivation to put in at least some effort. Michael was the kid that pitted out his T-shirt just walking to the starting line and ran the training miles in over thirty minutes. Most of the days he was late to our next period’s math class because he couldn’t finish the one mile in the allotted gym class time. And he usually spent the hour of advanced algebra breathing heavy and sweating through his tee, with a zombie-like blank stare and gaping mouth. But whatever, it was no big deal to most of the other kids because it was not a surprise, and Michael didn’t get ripped with ridicule, mainly due to the fact that half the gym class was impressed with a twelve year old kid that could get weed.

  Well, that ended. Michael shit his shorts during the final mile run.

  I remember almost everyone was finishing up their last four hundred meters, and Michael was still working his way to the halfway point, so there were plenty of people still lapping him around the track. Then some commotion.

  “Shit! It’s shit!”

  “What the fuck, he shit!”

  Everyone scattered and halted their running. Michael just collapsed onto the grass.

  Word was that Michael threw it into the infield grass. That stress shit must’ve been in his shorts for at least a little while before he got the nerve to reach into his shorts and try to toss the evidence into the grass. Hey, it’s just goose shit, or someone must’ve walked their dog here sometime. A gallant try to rid the proof of his acutely increased parasympathetic tone, but that’s when he got caught. He might have been better off keeping it in his pants, but then again, he still had more than half a mile to run and a shorts-full of the sloppy slurry from his sweat, shit and friction would’ve been intolerable. It was the epitome of a no win situation – the mind hazy from lack of oxygen, the body weak from maximal exertion, and fresh
shit in the tightie used-to-be whities. He got sent to the nurse, and then sent home.

  Michael was not too popular after that. Didn’t matter how much weed he smoked or sold, he became the kid that shit his pants. Someone also started a rumor a week later that he pissed his pants during a Social Studies exam. Since it was proven he was able to become totally incontinent of stool, it was only a small leap to take to peg him as incontinent of urine too. And in light of him recently shitting his shorts, he had no credibility in denying any excrement related stories, even though I have yet to find anyone that actually saw his piss on pants. He did eventually amp up his drug use to coke. He got arrested in high school for gun possession and went into the juvenile justice system. Last I heard was that Michael is locked up in the state penitentiary serving ten to twenty for dealing heroin.

  The slight bit of good news here was that only drug Xander looked to be on was cheeseburgers.

  “Xander, did you run the mile in gym?”

  “Last week I did.”

  “Did you poop your pants?”

  “What? No.”

  From his tone I could tell he really hadn’t. I guess Xander is just a shitless Fat Ferry. He hates gym because he just sucks at gym.

  “You know Xander, marine biologists need to be in good shape to get down to the wildlife they want to study. Swimming, climbing ocean shorelines, exploring deep waters – you need to be fit in order to do all that. And gym class is a great opportunity to get some exercise every day to start getting healthy for a career in marine biology.”

  I thought that little pep talk was pretty good for just having made all of it up in streaming thought. Kate perked up. “That’s so true, honey, and you want to be a good marine biologist, right?”

  Xander just nodded.

  “Jacque Cousteau was a fit guy, and he was one of the most famous marine biologists ever.” Another stroke of inspiration. Who knows if that’s even true, but I always picture Captain Nemo from the movie “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” when I think of Jacque and that captain was a fit enough guy to beat on a giant squid and survive an angry tentacle grasp.

  Xander finally looked up from his book. “I will try harder in gym.”

  That’s nice. It’s a bunch of crap, but it’s still nice. The world could use another Jacque Cousteau. Even an overweight one. But the amount of time and effort it would take for Xander to even get back to average fitness was massive, certainly dwarfing the medicine droppers of help thirty minutes of half-hearted gym class activity would ever add. It’s a vicious circle for fat kids in gym: so big they can’t compete with the other kids, so they don’t put in as much effort as the other kids, so they become even less competitive, then they get tossed to the sidelines, then they put in even less effort, so that eventually gym becomes thirty minutes of standing against padded walls on hardwood. Not enough activity to even burn off a can of soda. And having a teacher whose primary credentials are being able to wear shorts and inflate various balls doesn’t help with instilling motivation. Neither is the seeping sentiment that gym is extraneous – it’s always the first to meet the axe with any significant district budget cuts. Gym was not going to crack Xander’s case.

  Obviously, Xander’s physical exam was not good. Belly skin full of stretch marks. His midsection looked like pulled peach play-doh. The back of his neck had dark velvety skin -- acanthosis nigicans – a sign of insulin resistance, a stop on the road to diabetes. Most of his teeth were more fillings than native tooth, and new festering cavities gave his exhalations a sour punch. He sounded like he was out of breath from just hopping on and off the exam table. He was marinating in a thin layer of sweat that made him feel clammy all over, and look greasy as if he’d been manning the fry station and absorbing the oil splatter at McDonald’s all day. He smelled subtly of old world cheese.

  “Well, Kate, I’m not going to say anything new…”

  Sighing, “Yeah, we know, Xander has to lose weight.”

  “And I’m going to send Xander for some blood work today: fasting blood sugar, lipid panel, insulin and liver enzymes. And thyroid function, too.”

  Kate brightened a bit. “You think that could be it? Hypothyroidism?”

  The dream is that all Xander needs is a pill once a day to fix all of his ills. Just like most parents, she is holding on to hope that her child’s abnormality is due to some disease outside of her or the child’s control. It’s much better than acknowledging that he’s just fat because he’s fat. How convenient would it be to shift personal responsibility to some tangible condition beyond a person’s control? The next stop will be to say Xander has an addiction to food, that he has the “disease” of addiction, to compare him to a hypothetical heroin addict that has to use a little bit of heroin three times a day to get nutrients. Total crap. A person can get all their needed nutrients eating flavorless greens and meats if they wanted to do so. I have yet to meet the obese person claiming a food addiction that got fat eating dry salad and boiled skinless chicken. Xander is not addicted to food. He just enjoys the feeling of food that tastes good to him, just like everybody else, but he has chosen to forgo common sense and eat ridiculously high amounts of processed and instant gratification calorie dense foods because they taste the best to him and are more easily consumed, consequences be damned. He made a series of poor decisions that morphed into a bad habit consisting of nothing but continued poor food decisions. Obviously habits can be hard to break, but habits are just habits and are not ingrained into his DNA like his sex, so they can be eliminated with a convicted decision to modify behavior. If Kate was really serious about helping to rid his problem with food, she could just eliminate the overvalued highs that Xander has placed on tastiness. If certain foods cause problems, make the decision to eliminate them. Keep them out of the house. Make it harder to find those foods. Don’t let him have a taste, then decide to limit the problem food; the decision for control has to be made beforehand. Just have him eat home prepared meals only. Just have him eat raw vegetables and legumes every meal – not as delicious as bacon cheeseburgers, but it will stave off overeating, provide daily nutrients, and begin the journey of weight loss. But that would mean difficult sacrifice with only an abstract promise of a future healthier life – too much work for an unseen reward. So he will never give up his diet of deep fried fats. Kate would rather look for medical conditions that could be blamed for his weight and continue to allow him to wallow in his woe-is-me obesity.

  This hope for a medical disease diagnosis is the same as when Xander started doing a bit worse in school earlier this year. Kate cried it was ADHD. Again, total crap. No kid develops ADHD for the first time at Xander’s current age. Furthermore, though some kids really do have the disorder, nowadays, it’s a reason attributed by any parent for their kid with poor school performance. It’s easier to say their kid has a disorder that prevents focus, rather than admit the kid is just not that smart. By simple normal distribution curve, more kids are going to be average to below-average than above-average; not everyone is going to crack physics and organic chemistry, most are going to do well to balance their checkbooks and read checkout line magazines. But ADHD can be treated with a pill, so parents would rather have their kid labeled with a condition that can be ameliorated with medicine than be labeled as just being average. The ideal diagnoses for a dumb, fat kid for most parents would be ADHD and hypothyroidism, where a couple pills once a day would transform mind and body from Shrek to Captain America. There is no pill that will ever cancel out Xander eating as much crap as he wants.

  “No, I don’t think that hypothyroidism is that likely, but I think these labs are worth checking at this point.”

  “Ooh, let’s hope that’s what it is.”

  “Kate, most of these labs are to see if he’s got some other medical problems related to his obesity, not really to look for a reason for his obesity. We know he consumes too many calories and lives a sedentary lifestyle – that’s going to be the real reason.”

  Xander h
adn’t looked up from his book the whole time we were talking, but now his head shot up to meet his mom’s face, “Can you guys please shut up? I’ll try harder in gym, okay?”

  Kate just stared at him. They stared at each other for a while. I stared at them. I guess his mom’s unbridled glee at the prospect of him having some endocrine disorder was too much even for his teenage apathetic disposition. Time for me to end this visit.

  “Okay, so, I’ll have the nurse come in and get you those lab requisition forms.”

  Xander returned to his book while Kate continued staring. I left the room fast and quiet. Just as if he was a jar of mayonnaise left out in the midday sun, this fatty was starting to sour.

  FAT FROSH?

  “What the hell happened to you, Xander?”

  For his freshman physical, I expected to see a pizza faced blob with a curtain of greasy hair 360 degrees from scalp to shoulders in an attempt to cover up the facial train wreck, and clothes baggy and black to camouflage his girth. Adding hormones to a pot of fat is usually never pretty. Instead, Xander was tall and only mildly overweight, and with a more muscular frame. His hair was short and tousled in place with gel. And he was in jeans and a Matt Forte jersey. He looked like a fitter Chicago-bred Yogi Bear.

  “I cut out soda and Gatorade, and I joined the football team. Those two-a-days were brutal.”

  Kate was smiling ear-to-ear. She was looking at Xander as if gazing upon him for the first time after he emerged from a 15 hour labor. “Albert played football in college, so Xander thought he’d give it a try, and he’s doing great.”

  She was glowing. Her hair was up in a tight bun, she had on rimless glasses, a cashmere turtleneck, wool skirt and knee-high leather boots. She looked like the sexy librarian that could draw men to rehearse small talk on the Dewey Decimal System. Too bad I sent her out of the room. Xander was fourteen; he doesn’t need his mommy for his physicals anymore. There are going to questions that most teens will never answer honestly in front of their parents. Plus, no teenage boy wants his mom to catch a glimpse of his weiner during the hernia check.