The arrogance of youth

You know the ones I mean. Those skinny high school and college kids you see working at the supermarket or fast food place. The ones with the skinny asses barely big enough for one back pocket, let alone two. They can hardly keep their pants up because there is nothing to hang them on. These guys can and will eat anything and never gain a pound. With the arrogance of youth, these guys believe that they will never let themselves get out of control. They will never get fat.  They look at old guys with bellies as failures. You can see it in their eyes, drawn to your bulging belly when you order a tasteless salad and diet coke. They are thinking “Fat loser.” A pox on those guys.

Getting big is inevitable

As the years pile on it seems like just looking at something tasty adds a pound or two. There is always another temptation to resist and even when you apply all the will power you can muster you keep having to buy bigger pants . Worse, even those bigger pants can’t contain a belly you can’t suck in anymore. In fact it it is starting to lop over an over-stressed belt. Even with starving and denying yourself the pleasures of desert or a second helping of lasagna, the truth is hard to hide. You are fat!

It wouldn’t be so bad being fat so long as it meant that you could eat what you like. The reality is in the vain hope of getting back to skinny, you cut back and eat what is supposed to be healthy stuff and give up eating what you really want; ice cream, french fries, hamburgers and pasta. Even with all that deprivation, you are still fat. The consolation is that if you indulged your appetite and ate what you crave, you would be even fatter – a double-wide instead of a mere wide body.

Remember the good old days

It wasn’t always like this. Back in high school, and even college, 32 inch jeans would hang on your hipbones and three or four burgers would be an evening snack. Cheesecake? Ice cream? It was all good. Well, times change and one day you notice that you aren’t skinny any more. Those hipbones have some padding and you actually celebrate no longer being a wimp. Then a year or so later you develop bulges. Your cheeks are fuller, you sport a definite belly. Those 32 inch jeans are a distant memory. You are getting fat. Maybe it is time for a diet.

That is when it gets crazy because you still think of yourself as the skinny kid who can eat anything. You are in denial and imagine that with a little diet you can get back to your old self. You starve. You diet. Maybe you even take up exercise – running or weights but the sad truth is that you are never getting your skinny body back. Your metabolism has moved on, slowed down and is prepared to turn anything you eat into beautiful, bulging fat. You have a choice. You can be an unhappy fat man, eating rabbit food feeling deprived as you try to maintain your current level of overweight or a happy obese man eating what you like and getting bigger every day. It is a curse.

Their day will come

So I say down with those skinny guys. Those kids working at the supermarket or the fast food places, flaunting their lean bodies and gratifying their young appetites with whatever food takes their fancy. Each skinny ass just mocks your ample one billowing inside your elastic waist fat boy jeans. A pox on the lean waisted guy at the deli counter eying your big belly with disgust as you drool over the hefty sandwiches and rich potato salad and finally turn away, belly rumbling. Some days it is too much and you give in, flaunting your belly as you step up and and order a hefty sandwich, both potato and macaroni salad and a big wedge of cheesecake with cream soda to wash it down. Let him smirk at the shameless fat guy eating like a hog, you think as you stuff your gut happily. Let him feel superior with his youthful metabolism. His day will come.

I’ve come to accept that my skinny days are gone and never to return. I can live with eating tasteless , healthy food and still getting bigger. But I also have a way to handle those skinny guys with an attitude. Now I like to look at those skinny guys and see the future fat guys they are destined to be. I watch them fixing my lunch and imagine 50 pounds packed on their skinny frames. I smile at their double chins and flabby bellies. Let them feel superior. Time will put them in their place. Thirty years from now they will be where I am now, fat and hungry longing for something good to eat but longing to be the skinny guy they used to be. I know that I will pay for this lapse after eating a fattening snack and discovering when I let out my belt  that my pants are already stretched to capacity. Time to move up to bigger ones again. Skinny young guys will learn that lesson soon enough.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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