Fat (6 page)

FAT BULLY

    About once a month, I do a free sports physical clinic at a local grade school.  It’s a good way to provide some physicals for kids that otherwise wouldn’t get one.  And occasionally, I will see some minor urgent care stuff – strains, runny noses, rashes and such.

     On one visit to Jane Adams Elementary, as my mind started getting numb from the repetition of normal pediatric physicals, Xander was escorted into the exam room.  A burly teacher had a tight grip on Xander’s right upper arm.  Xander had a cut on his left hand and a zig-zagged scratch on the center of his forehead a la Harry Potter.  He was almost as wide as he was tall.

     “Hey Xander, long time no see, how’s it going buddy?”

     The teacher that was escorting him just shook his head.  “Not too good, he was beating up a kid again.”

     Makes sense.  Xander’s been getting called “Lardass” and “Triple ex-el-Xander” for a few years now, and that’s a perfect recipe to get bitter and mean.  And by the looks of him, he was just eating more junk to cope.  But he must’ve also figured out that at this age, his body used that excess fuel to grow wider and taller at a quicker rate than his peers.  Like how the grass where the neighborhood dogs squat their crap grows lushest.  He became the biggest kid in class.  Suddenly, he found another, more satisfying way to feel better: beating on kids.  I wish I could’ve been there when one kid too many called Xander “Fat-fuck”, and Xander reared back and connected with the kid’s face, sending the kid flying.  Like a semi-truck hitting a Prius.  And a lightbulb going off that mass was strength, at least at this pre-pubertal age.    

     “Let’s take a look at him.”

     Xander just had some superficial scratches and minor soft tissue swelling.  More so on his knuckles.  That kid he was beating on must have got lit up.

     “Anything hurt, Xander?”

     “No, not really, Dr. Grant.”

     I took his hand and started feeling around.  “Not here, or here?”

     “No, not really.”

     Then this teacher chimed in, “Are you sure nothing’s broken?  Because my cousin got in a fight once and he broke his hand.  Never healed right because the doc missed it.”

     I’m going to ignore this guy.  What did he think I was doing, not making sure it wasn’t broken?  If so, the unsolicited consult from the peanut gallery will surely crack the case.  I also once had a cousin that got wasted on Jim Beam and punched a clown at a circus, so maybe Xander is drunk right now?  Everyone likes to play armchair doctor, thinking their secondhand medical knowledge is fact, but most need to just sit quiet in that armchair and realize they are uninformed.  This is the type of guy that would Google some symptoms and read some website for an hour and then fight a doctor’s reasoned diagnosis with his own dim brainstorm by claiming he had done his research -- that is not research.  Research is done by multiply degreed scientists that devote their lives to advancing knowledge meticulously; research is done by committees of scientists reviewing hundreds of studies on their scientific robustness to come to an evidence based conclusion; research is done by physicians, who were trained for over a decade to have a skeptical eye, then reviewing committee conclusions and medical journals for skepticism-quashing robustness to reach a threshold to apply evidence based recommendations to clinical practice.  Scrolling a random blog for an hour is not research.  Don’t read a placemat then try to convince me that it’s
The New England Journal of Medicine
.  Don’t solve the kiddy word jumble on the placemat then claim to have cracked some far reaching scientific mystery.  Knowing someone who had something at sometime for some reason is not a basis for diagnosis.   

     “Xander’s all right, he’s good to go.”

     The teacher grabbed Xander’s arm, leaned closer to him and got serious.  “Xander, this is your third fight this month.  You’re going to be suspended for sure.  And why are you beating on little Sam, he’s half your size.”

    Kids should only tremble in fear of Xander if they were shipwrecked on a food-less island and were covered in butter, not here in school where there are dozens of vending machines to pump out seemingly unlimited amounts of Doritos and Snickers for Xander to feed his sour moods.  But food must’ve not been enough to fill all of Xander’s holes.  “What did little Sam do to deserve such a beating?”  

     The teacher gave Xander’s arm a squeeze.  “Tell him.”

     Xander just shrugged.

     “Tell Dr. Grant that you didn’t like Sam’s cardigan with Snoopy and Woodstock on it, and how you beat him down so you could rip it off him.”

     Fat people are supposed to be jolly.  Santa is Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick.  The Kool-Aid Man bursts through brick walls and offers cool refreshment with a bellowing chuckle.  Imagine a stereotypical cheery grandmother baking cookies; she is, in the least, generously overweight.  Are fat people all just gentle souls whose become sullied by society’s harsh mocking?  But then there’s Jabba the Hut.  Or Rush Limbaugh.  Or Tony Soprano.   Turns out, jerks come in all sizes.  The jerk gene does not discriminate.  Fat people always spout that they want to one day have their outsides be as beautiful as their insides, as if being overweight automatically qualifies a person as being internally good with a dyssynchrony of physique and personality. It is easy to
hide personality failings behind the theoretical effects of the perceived slights of others onto the voluntary elections of outward appearance, but
the fact is that no one wants to admit that their outsides may be just as bloated and disfigured as their insides.  Obesity could just as easily be a symptom of self-absorption, selfishness and stinginess.  Hell, neither Xander nor Brian would share even one damn purple Skittle with me. 

     Bullying is about power, and most, no matter their size, will happily take power given its therapeutic effects on some internal ill.  In particular, grade school bullies are usually the fat kid that just uses his weight advantage to pound kids.  The bully just started out eating too much, got fat, got called fatty-fat-fat, then got bitter, ate more to feel better, got even fatter, then realized it’s easy to overpower kids that weigh half your size.  And kids will respect someone that can beat up other kids.  I bet Xander is real popular now.  Suddenly kids become impressed rather than disgusted when Xander eats four bologna sandwiches for lunch.   Xander now gets picked first for recess football because he can carry would-be tacklers into the end zone as if they were kids hanging on the sides of a train headed to Darjeeling.  And with all that positive feedback, now Xander finds it hilarious pounding on a kid who loves
Peanuts
. 

     “Is the kid Xander beat up coming to clinic?”

     The teacher shook his head.  “We sent him to the hospital.  Xander sat on his face for a while and some kids said Sam might have stopped breathing for a while.”

     I almost laughed aloud.  A kid almost killed by smothering fat rolls.  Xander sent to death row for murder in the first by a fat-ass ass.  The kid should’ve tried to fight Xander by continually shuffling away just out of reach; Xander would’ve no doubt died of a heart attack if he chased the kid more than half a block.  Xander looked like he could die of a heart attack just from walking to a soda machine.  He was a walking heart attack in grade school.

     It is too bad that grade school bully weight will eventually became a disadvantage.  Puberty will hit and it will turn out that fat weight is very different from muscle weight.  When other kids hit puberty, they will gain muscle mass because their intake is balanced enough to create good mass rather than having to store bad mass.  Xander’s state of intake will make him a super-sized storage facility for bad mass.  I bet puberty for Xander will mean acne, nocturnal emissions and non-stop fast food.  Topical benzoyl peroxide will tame the acne, masturbation will offer release from the emissions, but his weight will never meet the salve of diet and exercise.  It will become the festering sore that only gets worse.  I bet puberty for little Sam will be developing a Napoleon complex and starting to lift weights with an angry passion, then quelling his internal ills by beating on fat kids when he develops into a fire hydrant of a linebacker.  Xander’s just getting his time in the bully sun before it’s too late.

     The teacher started pulling Xander out of the room. 

     “Say hi to your mom for me, Xander.”

     “Okay, Dr. Grant.”

JUNIOR

    When Xander rolled in for his seventh grade physical, it was apparent he was dedicated to going the route of bigger being better.  For medical purposes, kids’ weights are measured in kilograms; Xander was eighty kilograms when he should’ve been eighty pounds.   And now he was sporting Buddy Holly glasses.  And going out in public in dirty sweatpants and a T-shirt with a smiling whale cartoon on the front set under the words “Whales are fun!”. 

     Seventh grade is the start of some heightened social awareness – puberty starts for most, the opposite sex become noticed, and being cool stops being about baseball cards and Barbies.  Seeing Xander in sweats and a marine wildlife tee as a seventh grader was concerning.

     “Hey Kate, how’s Xander doing?”

     “He’s doing real well.”

     Xander had his head buried in a book entitled “Marine Biology”.

     “What activities is he doing now?”

     “He’s really taken to swimming.  He’s goes all the time at the club.”

      It looks like he needs to go more.  Whatever calories he’s burning by swimming is just mist evaporating off an ocean of eating, for sure.  Fat does float, though.  I imagine him floating on his back in the shallow end peeling into a Snickers bar, looking like an otter cracking into a clam.

     “How’s he doing at school?”

     “Really great.  Ever since he watched something on whales on National Geographic, all he talks about is wanting to be a marine biologist.  I mean, his bedroom is wall to wall pictures of turtles, whales, manatees, sharks…”

     Kate went on for another few minutes naming more sea wildlife.  Curious that she thinks I don’t get it that Xander is now obsessed with marine biology, and that the only way to convince me is by listing animals that live in or near oceans.  It’s always good to have interests but becoming this obsessed, this early, turns Xander from the “fat kid” to the “weird fat kid into whales”.  Kids are just going to call him a whale.  It is really concerning that either Xander doesn’t see the obvious fodder or that he doesn’t care.

     “…and sea anemomes.  It’s really given him motivation to do well in school.  I even brought his report card to show you.”

     Kate fished around in her Dior purse for a while.  She had on matching Gucci shoes and a revealing Gucci tunic.  I didn’t know Gucci made anything besides purses.

     “I can’t find it here.  Oh, Xander do you have it?  Show Dr. Grant your report card, Xander.”

     Xander reached into his book and fished out a slip of paper, holding it out for me without lifting his head from his book.  I took the report card.  All A’s, and one D.  In gym.

     “What happened in gym, little buddy.”

     “Gym is stupid.”

     “Why is it stupid?”

     “Because it is.”

     Preteens are usually jerkfaces to any adult, especially to their doctor, but this smelled different.  It smelled familiar.

     I knew a kid named Michael Ferry who was in most of my gifted classes in junior high – we called him “Fat Ferry”.   He was however a surprisingly popular kid for being a five-four, two hundred thirty pound scumbag.  Scumbag in the sense that he wore the same zebra striped pants everyday with an array of T-shirts that seemed to be more sweat and grease than cotton.  He was undoubtedly popular from the fact that he dabbled in smoking and selling weed. 

     Every fall, every seventh and eighth grader would have to run the mile for a grade in gym.  There would be some training runs for a week or so to gear us up for the final run, and the hope was that the final run would be a personal best.  Better times meant better grades, and slacking was punished with a redo of the mile, so there was good motivation to put in at least some effort.  Michael was the kid that pitted out his T-shirt just walking to the starting line and ran the training miles in over thirty minutes.  Most of the days he was late to our next period’s math class because he couldn’t finish the one mile in the allotted gym class time.  And he usually spent the hour of advanced algebra breathing heavy and sweating through his tee, with a zombie-like blank stare and gaping mouth.   But whatever, it was no big deal to most of the other kids because it was not a surprise, and Michael didn’t get ripped with ridicule, mainly due to the fact that half the gym class was impressed with a twelve year old kid that could get weed. 

     Well, that ended.  Michael shit his shorts during the final mile run. 

     I remember almost everyone was finishing up their last four hundred meters, and Michael was still working his way to the halfway point, so there were plenty of people still lapping him around the track.  Then some commotion.