On the Bright Side:

Now the fat kid in school will have a lot of company. In fact, maybe the fat kids'll gang up on the skinnies.

I have a picture of myself that I often think of while I'm sitting here thinking about my weight--a not inconsiderable figure--it shows a skinny brown 10?-year-old kid in a bowl haircut with an oddly delighted grin and a baseball mitt on one hand.

And I think to myself:
That kid looks pretty £µ©λin' smug for someone wearing a polyester shirt.

Seriously: he's got a go-to-hell, top-o'-the-world smile on him. Which seems to belie a lot of my memories of that odd and turbulent time.

One day I'll tell you how that kid wound up eighteen and working at Burger Thing, with only two pairs of pants that fit him. And perhaps I'll see if you'd believe that he went on to gain another thirty-five pounds.

We're talking about the same kid, the kid in this picture. But that kid never worried about his weight.