Skinny People and Fat People

In this world, there are skinny people and fat people.  Personally, I don’t believe that physical appearance has one single thing to do with whether you are a fat person or a skinny person.  I think it all has to do with what’s between your ears.  Allow me to explain.

When I was growing up, my family went on a whirlwind tour of Europe. My older brother kept a diary of the whole trip.  All these years later, we always have a good laugh when we talk about that diary.  It went something like this:

Day One: Dear Diary, we arrived in Paris today.  We saw the Eiffel Tower.  For breakfast, I had Eggs Benedict with strawberries in cream.  For lunch, I had a chef’s salad.  For dinner, I had escargot as an appetizer, chateaubriand for my main course, and cherries jubilee for dessert.

Day Two: Dear Diary, we spent the day in Rome today. We saw the Coliseum. I had a continental breakfast with a croissant and fresh butter.  For lunch, I had a tuna sandwich.  For dinner, I ate spaghetti.

It was hysterical.  Our family ate its way through Europe.  To this day, My husband laughs when my parents come to visit because at dinner they are discussing what we will have for breakfast in the morning and in the morning, they are discussing what we should plan for dinner.

Being Jewish alone will cause anyone a bit of food trauma.  All holidays are surrounded by food.  As the Jewish motto goes, we suffered, we survived, let’s eat!

What I’m trying to say here, is that my family is a family of fat people.  Some of us are physically thin, and some of us are physically fat, but all of us, have food on the brain.  We lost my grandmother many years ago, but I can still clearly hear her voice repeating the phrases she most frequently uttered.

1. Before a meal: “Jeet?” (definition: did you eat?)

2. After a meal: “You have ample?” (I think this one is self-explanatory.)

3. Five minutes after a meal: “Jeet?”

Now my husband, his family is full of skinny people.  His family would’ve gone to Europe and kept diaries of all the sites they’d seen and the people they’d met.  Today, my husband has, for the first time, developed a little baby pot belly.  This does not, and I repeat, does not, make him a fat person.  He’s a skinny person.  I’m the fat person.  Here’s why.

One day, we went to the grocery together.  We were making all the necessary purchases when my husband made an impulse purchase of a package of double stuffed Oreo cookies.  We went home and unloaded the groceries into the pantry.  Every day for a week, those cookies called to me.  At first, it was just a little whisper.

“Leslie, we’re here.”

Then they got more insistent.

“Leslie, we’re here. Come eat us.”

Then they started screaming at me.

“WHY HAVEN’T YOU EATEN US?”

Finally, they took action and poured themselves a cold glass of milk and set it out on the counter. 

“Leslie, we’re ready for dunking now.”

After an entire week of suffering to prevent myself from eating my husband’s cookies, I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I finally told my husband to eat his stupid cookies or I was going to throw them away(for full disclosure, I don’t think I used the actual word “stupid” here but more of a stronger, less ladylike word).

Do you know what his response was to me?  Can you imagine what he said?  He told me that he forgot we bought them.  He forgot!!!!!!!

Now that’s a skinny person for ya.

In my next life, when my mother goes to get me a warm chocolate chip cookie to make me feel better when I skin my knee on the playground, I know exactly what I’m going to do.  I’m going to tape it to my knee.  Yep, I’ll put it right over the wound.  I’ll put it there instead of eating eat because it will be my understanding that it’s to be put on my skinned knee to make it feel better.  How on earth would eating it make me feel better?  This will be my understanding about comfort food in my next life. Because in my next life, I’m determined to be a skinny person!