A WEIGHTY QUESTION

The impossible sometimes happens, you know? Fat people always wish that they would magically get thin. Doesn't happen, usually. Fat people tend to get fatter. Some get used to the fatness, some try to get rid of it with the good advice that's so freely available (even facebook is doing it -Check out the 5 tips to get rid of belly fat ) but most just passively hate large portions of their bodies. I used to think that people just made fun of overweight people at their expense, but it turns out they were making fun at their expanse. The reason I can write so insensitively about fatties is because I'm one myself. No, seriously. Stop laughing.


I suffer from what I call 'The Fat Hangover'. Between my sixth and eleventh standards, I was a fat boy, of middling height. I do not kid with you. Being fat usually has a lot of strings attached but thankfully I didn't experience much of the social trauma of childhood fatness. In my school, if you had half a brain, the kids would let you alone, didn't matter if you were fat or had bad eyesight. If you weren't smart, then God help you. I knew a kid called Andrew Shirley (yes you read that right) who had his glasses broken at least once by every guy in a particular gang. But the less obnoxious fat kids like me, the ones who passed the exams and whose homework was copyable, we were left pretty much alone. (except old Murtaza, of course. There are always exceptions) So everyone was used to Fat Francis, everyone including Fat Francis himself. Then, suddenly, somewhere between 11th and 12th, I grew up. From a portly five foot seven, I went to a gangly, gawky six foot nothing in about five months. My body didn't know how to handle this. It was almost as if all the fat in my body went to my extremities and caused them to elongate (Stop laughing, I know what you're thinking). So, all of a sudden, I was a tall skinny boy.

Unfortunately, in my mind, I'm still fat. This mental image is helped by the fact that I still possess a considerable belly.


My peculiar predicament struck me rather forcibly just a few days back when I made a passing comment about how all the skinny people in the room seemed to be holding a conference and one of the girls told me that maybe I should go join them. I looked at her like she was crazy. Why was she mocking me, a poor fat boy?

I'm an outcast. The fat people think I'm skinny. I think I'm fat. I don't have a psycho-morphological group of my own. Is there anybody out there who feels the way I do?! Help!