Horror Photo and the Drug that Caused It

FatMe

Boxes of photos sat before me as I slowly sifted through them, smiling at memories of days gone by. Aww, my cute oldest baby (future kids not born yet), my mom, my dad, my sisters, my cousins, places we visited…

But – wait – who’s this? The one with arms so enormous, her stretched-to-the-max sleeves make them look as if they practically exploded out of the material. And look at that face, so swollen it looks like she visited a fat booth. Weird.

A laugh escapes me – looks as if somebody blew into her mouth with a straw and kept blowing until her cheeks looked ready to pop.

This picture must belong to somebody else, I remember thinking. The place that developed the film must have accidentally thrown in some stranger’s photo. We’ve gotten photos that weren’t ours before. Who IS this? I couldn’t stand it any more. She didn’t look remotely familiar to me and she was holding my daughter on her lap! She must be SOMEBODY I know. But who? If she was holding my daughter, I had to know her, right? But if I ask, everyone will think I’ve lost my mind.

Curiouser and curiouser.

After starting at the picture for several minutes and not being able to force my brain to remember her, I finally asked my mom. “Who IS that?”

And then it happened?

What? What’s happening? The world is spinning out of control. My head is spinning inside it, a tornado in the midst of a hurricane. I’m getting dizzy. I think I’m going to pass out. I’m having a Nightmare on Film Street!

Ohmigodohmigodohmigod!

T-R-U-S-T M-E when I say, “I have PROOF that time really does stand still,” because when my mother told me that the hybrid Ghostbusters’ Stay Puft Marshmallow/Michelin Man staring back at me from the photo was me, I drifted away, out of my body and out of the room. The horrifying picture below me stared up at me, taunting me. I must have had, “WARNING: Explosives!” tattooed on my butt as I floated up into the sky far above the room. The realization that the photo of THAT WOMAN was really me caused me to burst into flames at which point my fat splattered all over the room and all over everyone in that room. I was flabbergasted – I like that word – I’m going to say it again – flabbergasted.

“YOU LET ME WALK AROUND LOOKING LIKE THAT – MOOOOOOOMMMM?”

“I didn’t LET you. It was a kind of gradual thing. I didn’t even notice it happening until the neighbor kids asked if they could blow you up a little more, throw you over a cliff, and watch you fly. I’s no mystery, really. It all had to do with that pregnant zone you were in.”

“That makes no sense. I wasn’t pregnant.”

“Nope, that’s what you said – pregnant zone. You said, ‘LOOK what that pregnant zone did to me!’ Sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

I immediately transported to a time when I had to take that good-for-everything drug that works the same way helium stretches a balloon – prednisone. Oh, yeah. After taking that drug for nearly two months straight, my body ballooned to a level so astonishing I couldn’t believe skin could stretch so far.

Photos of me have always been the bane of my existence. One time my second oldest daughter asked me, “Mommy will all my pictures turn to black and white when I get older too?” I laughed. How should I know? Maybe they would. If I can’t recognize myself, everything is suspect. I mean, if Congress can shut down when nobody thought they were working in the first place, anything is possible.

No, my little chickadee, your photos won’t change to black and white, but prednisone, taken over a long period of time, might cause you to explode out of your photos. And one day your government might shut down because Congress will be run by a bunch of tantrum-throwing toddlers.

Curiouser and curiouser.

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