You Need To Lose Some Weight

I’ve been hearing that ever since my carefree days as a fetus. I was about 7 lb. 6 oz. at birth (I checked my birth certificate) and that’s not too bad in most circles, but a lot of babies born with health issues tend to come in as featherweights. This makes me think that if everything had been OK healthwise I might have tipped the scales at 180 lbs at birth.

I know that my father was 12 lbs. – and he was born at home – to a mother who was barely 5 feet tall and under 100lbs.

Needless to say, he was an only child and my grandfather started smoking.

While leafing through a shoebox full of old photographs I found a couple of me at about three years old. I was looking slim, trim, and a real hottie in my age group.

Then the world insisted that I go to school.

Photographs of me from age 6 onward show me as a chubby child. No, that’s not true. I was fat. I can only attribute this endomorphic change to the stress of education at the hands of the Little Sisters of the Right Cross (followed up by a nasty Left hook.). That and my discovery of Potato Chips.

It was also discovered at roughly the same time that I couldn’t see worth a darn. We got our first TV (A 12” B&W Philco). Sitting only 6 inches from the screen with a bag of potato chips was the tipoff. Also there was the note from the Sisters that I couldn’t see the Blackboard (Not the “Chalkboard”) from any farther than from the first row of desks.

So, there I am in countless annual school pictures – fat and wearing glasses. Then in fifth grade add steel leg braces. Such fun.

This alluring combination did enhance my education in a non-orthodox way. My reading and language skills improved and I developed a talent for soul-withering sarcasm, and I learned to fight dirty. It didn’t take long for certain other boys to learn that picking on Krafty could result in public humiliation and the need to consider adoption when they grew up and wanted to start a family of their own.

Kids have to learn to take care of themselves, no?

I think that the Nuns learned to appreciate my new skill set. My Mother wasn’t too happy about it all though.

 And through all of this I put on weight. I had discovered pizza.

Jump cut to today. I still love potato chips and pizza, just not as 2 of the 4 Basic Food Groups.

I still hear from my doctors that I need to slim down. It’s not that I’m so big that I exert tidal influence on the ocean or anything. Now they tell me to lose 20 to 25 pounds, not 100 like they said while I was in college and pizza and chips were always on the menu. Oh, darn. I think I’ve gone and made myself hungry. Let me think. Maybe some pizza?

 

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