I'm *pretty* sure I was called "fatso" last week ... and it kind of threw me for a loop.
To set the stage, as inspired by the death of my biological mother (after having lost my biological father a few years back) and realizing that, in the overall scheme of things, I'm next ... I'm a few weeks into a long term weight loss journey (officially originally looking to drop 50 pounds over 16 months after hitting a high of 252.5 lbs), and the plan is all about habit change ... which means it's built on the concepts of "routinizing and incrementalizing [trademark pending]".
One of the routines is consistently taking my hour lunches as walk-breaks out and about in the neighborhood (a definite perk of working from home AND of "home" being in southern Florida), and one of the things happening in increments is that each week, I add one more block that gets jogged instead of walked (this week, I'm up to seven jog-blocks). I'm still all new to this, so it's not quite a situation where those seven blocks happen in a row (more like two on, one off, etc) ... but I'm getting it done despite my knees thinking about unionizing and going on strike due to the new expectations of them.
It's also true that I do all of this topless (again, see factoid about living in southern Florida ... I do almost everything topless down here) ... primarily because I'm a hard-core sweat-er -- I've learned that even the webbing of my fingers sweats during this exercise in the midday sun. (As a side note, I see that as even more evidence to dispute my father's fourth wife's repeated attempts to convince me that my father "was whomever my mother said it was" [my father's fourth wife was a *real* sweetheart {sarcasm alert}], seeing as how I have memories from when I was younger of my father being drenched just from mowing the lawn.)
Because I know this about myself, I do try to make it a point to do the jogging part of this routine on the quiet side streets of my 'hood, in case I look funny ... or jiggle too much ... so that only the various dogs that cheer me on along the way have to witness what I look like as I do it. The problem is that as I increase the number of blocks jogged, I eventually have to do some of them on the bigger four lane roads that are part of my walking paths.
It was on one of those corners that the aforementioned incident happened. As I completed my seventh block, out of breath and on shaky legs while waiting for the traffic light to change (as a newbie, traffic lights are actually my best friends as they let me stop and recover surreptitiously), a car drove past and someone yelled out "fatso".
My first thought was that I misheard. But try as I could to come up with an alternative exhortation that sounded like "fatso" that might have been what was said instead ... I ended up with nothing.
My second thought was that I heard it correctly ... and it was just karma. You see, I was once the person who would yell out of the window when going over a bridge at anyone walking on it, screaming out "don't jump" as I went past. I finally stopped because it struck me that, what with driving along at an advanced speed, the passers-by were probably only hearing the second word of my shouted advice, which was the exact OPPOSITE of the message that I was trying to send.
My third thought was ... "what a dick"! I didn't see the face (or the body) of the person who yelled, and it could very well be that whomever it was had negative body fat percentage (if that's even possible) and regularly poses for any open casting calls for Adonises as needed. But regardless, and I blame the social media world, where everyone has a comment and thinks that everyone else wants to hear it, there was absolutely NO sign I was sending that I was currently seeking any feedback about my status.
My fourth through four thousandth thoughts were also about how the guy was a dick, truth be told.
My four thousand and first thought was that it was time to rise above the hater, and to realize that I have never been much of one who behaves based on caring about what others think ... and that that wasn't one of the behaviors I was trying to change. To the contrary, the most formative years of my life were all about disproving those who were certain that I would fail ... or not make it to college .. or not return to college after taking a semester off for an internship opportunity ... or not survive law school after a rocky period ... etc., etc. The thoughts of others expecting me to not succeed were fuel to my fire for years. So if he-who-called-me-fatso wanted to stoke that flame so that it moved me closer and closer to my goal ... well then so be it.
Here's the reality ... one "fatso" in the overall scheme of things actually doesn't amount to all that much. Because, although one "fatso" cut a little deeper into my psyche, it was because I let it happen that way ... and because I had forgotten that, since starting this whole thing, I'd actually gotten more cat calls that belonged in the positive category. Just today I got a "looking fine" from some party girls in a van who drove past ... and the girl hooker on a bike gave me a "hey baaaby" the other day ... and, in what I'll take as a positive development, the boy hookers glare at me like I'm trying to horn in on their turf (here in southern Florida, hooking is an equal opportunity activity ... and my Friday walks take me behind the Sears where the boy hookers hang out) ... plus I've had some horns beeped in my direction over the last few weeks that I will interpret as honks of encouragement.
So you know what, Mr. Jack-douche ... I don't care what you think of me. I don't care that you felt the need to provide your commentary about my situation. I only care about accuracy. Seeing as how I had already dropped 10 lbs by the day you shouted out at me, I just wish you had done your research and yelled "4% less fatso than the fatso you were when you started" at me that afternoon.
Or, you know ... that you had just kept your own fat mouth shut (I was recently assured that skinny people can have fat mouths ... so it's okay for me to stoop to that level).
WHAT I FOUND WHEN I GOOGLED FATSO:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-553-15797-0
WHAT I FOUND WHEN I GOOGLED SHUT YOUR FAT MOUTH (ADULT LANGUAGE):
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shut+your+fat+mouth
REMEMBER, YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO MATTERS:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephenie-zamora/how-to-handle-life-when-e_b_4920116.html
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