Fat Kids

First: I’m so thrilled to be contributing to this blog. Meg is the funniest person I know, and I’m excited to get to work with her. I’ve also had really positive experiences with the few readers I’ve interacted with, which is a step up from the blog I used to co-write, which got death threats. (From one French-Canadian Orthodox Jew, so not like ACTUAL KILLING but still.) Co-Blogger Chris will be a hard act to follow, so if I fuck up I’ll start blogging in green and we can alllll pretend…

Second: Meg and I totally hooked up once. On Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin’s brother’s sofa. She’s good.

Third: I’m so pleased that my “sorr about the bag” thing worked. I think about “sorr about the bag” most days. My faves:

Meg pity-fucks a butter-face guy, but takes the usual butter-face precaution. She is sorr about the bag.

Meg gets a job tending a mountain hotel for the winter. As madness sets in, Co-Blogger Chris inspects her manuscript, only to find that it reads:

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

Meg vomits in a friend’s purse. “Uh… sorr about the bag?”

It even got the point where when I’d play video games and the characters would say their little pre-recorded taunts, I would respond “sorr about the bag” – aloud, to myself.

“If you seek to destroy the power of Apocalypse, X-Men, you must first defeat the Scarlet Witch!”

“SORR ABOUT THE BAG, WANDA”

The telegram was surprisingly expensive but totally worth it. Let’s make “sorr about the bag” the new “SIKE!” (“Psych?” I’ve never been sure…)

Fourth: Fat kids. I wanted to have this big amazing well-done “Ready or not… here comes Tulane Chris” post, so I half-wrote one about my funeral and one about what I would do if I were a TV executive. Neither of them quite worked, and I was worried I’d lost my touch, when I realized something,

I never told you about the fat kids.

Now, for me, fat kid is a state of mind. It is possible – just – to be fat, and a child, without being a fat kid. It is also possible – easily – to be an adult fat kid. (Full disclosure: in high school, I had junior year third period “Theatrical Design,” also called “dick around on the stage and paint AN prop.” We started bringing food to class – not like “oh here are some Ritz” but like RIBS – and I started calling it “fat class” and it became a tradition. I will, however, point out that I was the slenderest person in the class at the time.) Wherever broken dreams and empty Sno-Ball wrappers lay thick on the ground… there are fat kids. Wherever the smell of desperate sweat mixes with the heady tang of Cheez Curls, there are fat kids. Wherever a homosexual vegetarian in the tenth grade wearing short-shorts leaves a pint of ice cream on the counter for an hours and then drinks it before putting together THE most elaborate Christmas decorations in our entire town… there they are. (I absolutely went to high school with this kid.)

Anyway. Last summer, my boyfriend, hereafter known as Giant Camel, and I drove from central Texas to Philadelphia. It was a wonderful trip, blah blah, I love New Orleans and my boyfriend and seeing new places, whatever. The funny parts happened in Tennessee. Memphis was a nightmare, so we r-r-r-raced across long lean Tennessee to get to the highlight of the trip.

Dollywood.

Dollywood is wonderful. You don’t have to love Dolly to enjoy it, but if you love Dolly it’s the best thing in the world. It was the Tennessee sales-tax holiday so everyone else was at the outlet mall, so the park was thinly populated. Blah blah, one of the most nearly perfect days of my life, happiness isn’t funny.

So.

We get to the head of the rollercoaster line, and we see that the park people are having trouble closing the safety bar on this woman. At one point they actually – yes – lift her fat to try to get the bar to close under it. I could never do something like that. I would honestly rather die than say, “Ma’am? Let me just pick up your fat here, and we’ll try to get this bar down to your pubic bone.” I could lift the fat, but I could never say that. Anyway, she had to get off and wait for her friends to ride.

They made her wait in a little corral.

She couldn’t go back through the line and apparently didn’t want to leave without her party, so they shooed her back to a little area to the side with a chain across it, put her in, and rechained it so she wouldn’t get run over by the rollercoaster. This corral is in FULL VIEW OF ALL RIDERS, and when we finished our ride and got off there were three people in it. Three.

So, more Dollywood, and then we leave. As we go across the parking lot, a car passes in front of us, and in the back seat is literally the largest child I’ve ever seen. He’s slumped in the seat, bulging over the seatbelt, breathing shallowly. It was like watching a python digest a sumo wrestler.I have no idea what they did at the park, because I’m not sure this kid could walk, and I’m absolutely sure he was too big for the rollercoaster. Maybe that was why? A good dose of Corral Time and he’ll stop putting chocolate syrup in his Yoo-Hoo?

It was too hot to eat all day so we stop at the Ryan’s on our way back. Those of you who missed the greasy joys of a Southern upbringing may not know about Ryan’s. It’s basically Golden Corral, but not as fancy. If you’re too tired to dress up enough for Golden Corral, you go to Ryan’s.

Now, I am an eater from way back. I was dipping popcorn shrimp in honey mustard when I saw this, and I was still shocked. A family at a table near us had gotten up to leave, but one little girl was still at the table. I heard a shriek, and I turned to see this girl, red-faced, tears leaking out of her little screwed-up eyes, holding onto the table with both hands for dear life and hissing “I’m. Not. READY! I’m. Still. HUNGRY!” Everyone was staring. Everyone at the all-you-can-eat buffet in the Deep South was staring at this little girl’s gluttony tantrum. We had our choice of three kinds of pork, three gravies, and full access to a dessert bar, there was a bucket of ranch dressing in the room, and this eight-year-old girl was putting all us button-straining Confederate eaters to shame.

Ending posts is clearly my weak spot, as attested by the Terry Cooper “and then he bought a motorcycle” ending, which is true but lacks any and all dramatic tension. If this were a short story, I could make up a future for this girl, full of curly fries and boyfriends with beautiful brown eyes who say things like “I like a soft woman” and get employee discounts at Sonic. If this were CNN, I could end this post with some vague, not particularly helpful “tips” for making children marginally less overweight, i.e. “Take the refrigerator out of your child’s bedroom, or stock it with healthy snacks like chicken stock and raw yams.” And if I were giving a report to Ryan’s stockholders, I could just draw little pigs at a trough throwing cash in the air. As it is, I’ll just ask that, next time you enjoy a delicious meal, take a bite for the little girl at Ryan’s. She’ll thank you for it.