7. The Program

I have always been fat. Even while skinny in my twenties, I knew that I was really just a fat person masquerading as a skinny person. But I started off as a fat kid, and luckily grew into a tall man who lost a significant amount of the weight and kept it off for about a decade, but proved my own adage right by gaining it all back by the age of thirty. And then I just packed on more weight as I steamed toward 40. And now, at 41, I was not obese, but I was only about three pounds away from it, carrying around about 30 extra pounds.

In my linage, I clearly hailed from my mother’s roly-poly, bottom of the barrel, Irish potato folk stock. And my step-father, who was from a decidedly devilishly thin Swedish line, never let me and my likewise rotund mother and sister ever forget this. My childhood was fraught with constant nasty wounding comments about my weight spat by him, and then mother sneaking me sweets to make up for it. So the psychology of my heft was now twisted somewhere deep inside my gut, in a blackened spot I preferred not to poke at.     

But here now toppling over the age of 40, I decided I needed to diet again. This was necessitated by the fact that I was distinctly rolling toward having to start shopping at the Big and Tall Shops. I dreaded these places, as besides hosting a limited selection of billowy affairs, their items also carried appropriately heftier price tags. And while this was logical to me, as a shirt the size of a skiff’s sail should be more expensive than, say, a normal human-sized shirt, it displeased the miser in me.  So I mulled this diet idea over obsessively for a while before deciding to finally make it official by mentioning it to my dear Thaddeus.  

“I’m going on a diet,” I said proudly, standing up from the couch with some degree of difficulty.

“Oprah says to call it ‘A Program,’” Thad said rather sanctimoniously, as if Oprah had called him personally and told him to call it that.

“Oh, and what does Oprah mean by that?”

Without looking away from the television he said, “You have to affect diet, exercise, and life style changes together to lose weight and keep it off.”

Rather stunned by this completely logical bit of TV wisdom I said, “Well, that makes perfect sense.”

“Of course it does,” he said looking up rather Stepfordly, “Oprah said it.”

Thad had only recently put on some weight. For all of our lives he had always been the thin, pretty one. But as he neared 40 himself, something metabolic had happened, and he had began to sprout a belly like a surprise tumor, which, interestingly, he absolutely, completely, and resolutely chose never to acknowledge. 

Now, having always been skinny, Thad did not have the ingrained American knowhow to be ashamed of his fat, so he had no idea how to begin to wear this new belly of his. He started off by covering it with clingy sporty knits and stretchy horizontal striped poly-cotton blends, all of which fit him like the skin of a summer sausage. I so wanted to show him the way of the fat, how to drape and conceal and just put a damn coat over it all, but after the first few humorous comments I got in about his weight gain, I was regulated to the guest room for a night and instructed to NEVER bring up the topic again. So instead I had learned to endure shopping outings with him in a shirt so tight it appeared he was rustling a particularly comfy throw pillow, or jeans so snug he could not sit down properly, and had to be taken home laying prone in the backseat of the car.  

So because of this unsaid covenant between us, I knew I had to approach the whole idea of dieting carefully, as not to upset his sacred sensibilities. But because we lived together, I knew to make this Program work for me; we were going to have to make some changes.     

A few days later I dared to broach the topic again, as he stood in the kitchen making a cake.

“So, I’m going to start my Program next Monday.”

“Good for you,” Thad said with absolutely no good will in his voice at all.

“What I’ve decided is that I am going to eat less, eat better, only get one sweet a week, garden more, and walk to work more.”

“Bravo,” he said licking the batter covered spatula.

Even though his eyes said he wanted me dead, I decided just to go for it, “You know this might be a good thing for both of us to do.”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING!” He erupted, as if from some demonic pit from far below the earth’s surface, coming at me with the spatula like it was a shiv.

“Nothing!” I whimpered, backing away, scared for my life.

“ARE YOU SAYING I NEED A PROGRAM TOO?” The voice was not his; it was otherworldly, maybe James Earl Jones’.

“No, no!” I couldn’t even look into his eyes, afraid their glare would turn me to stone right then and there in the kitchen. 

“THEN WHY DID YOU SAY IT!”

“I was wrong!” I cowered, “I just thought it would be easier on me if we both did it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

The next thing I knew he was simply gone, vanished from my view, as if he had evaporated before me, leaving no trace but the spatula tossed in the sink.

I later saw him smoking outside, and knew not to go to him.

We didn’t talk much that night.

Two days later I decided to broach the subject again, as my start day was quickly approaching.

I walked in to the Kitchen to find him making sandwiches for lunch.

“You know what one of the treats Mom would make us when we were kids?’

“What?” he said.

“A sugar sandwich.”

“Get out!”

“Nope. Hand to God. A sugar sandwich.”

“Just a sandwich made of sugar?” he asked.

“Well, it was two pieces of the gooiest white Wonder Bread you ever saw,  spread with butter, and then sprinkled liberally with sugar.”

“You…are…kidding?” Thad said mouth draped open for effect.

“Nope. That was our afterschool snack. My sister and I would come in from school and sing ‘Sugar Sandwich! Sugar Sandwich!’ and Mother would make each of us one.”

“My mother would never have done that. We got fruit or granola or something terrible. Sweets were Verbotene!”

“And that’s because you’re from a very thin line of people, so sweets were more of a special treat. But for my family of potatoes in overalls, sweets were an everyday occurance. And thus why I still have some of my weight problems today.”

We were silent for a minute, I think he realizing my point.  

He started quietly, “I’m not going to do a Program myself, but I will help you on yours, okay?”

“Okay. No problem. I appreciate that.” It wasn’t optimal, but I could live with it.

We were silent for another minute.

Then he said, looking me in the face, “And you know I think you look great just the way you are.”

“Thank you,” I said and my whole body went warm from my fat little toes all the way up to the top of my fat bald head.

           We finished making the sandwiches together.