A change of heart

I was a chubby kid.  In my mind, I was fat.  My sister tried to make me feel better by saying, "You're not fat.  You're pleasantly plump." Oddly, that didn't help much.

Throughout childhood, my best friends were my cousins.  They were thin.  We spent hours playing together and most of the time we got along swimmingly.  But, once in a while, after we had spent too much time together, things would turn ugly.

In typical childhood fashion, we would resort to name calling.  They would call me, "fatty," and I would put my hands on my hips and  retaliate by yelling, "Well, I'd rather be fat than so skinny I'd blow away in the wind."

Yep, that was a clever rebuttal but secretly I wanted to be the "skinny" one in the name calling game.

Fatty and two skinnies

I grew up and remained one of the bigger girls.  My sister and I have often laughed about the fact that we both jumped from a size 6X to an 11.  My dad liked to say, "You're just a big girl," as if that big bone theory made it all better.

As I approached my 50th birthday, I also approached a number on the scale I hadn't seen since I was an expectant mother.   I had to make a change.  I started exercising for the first time in my life. Surprisingly, I started to understand what people meant by that annoying comment, "Exercising makes you feel better."   I actually feel better physically and mentally.

These days my cousins and I laugh about the good old days and compliment each other's hair styles and outfits.  Gone are the insults of our youth.  Yet, I am reminded of the name calling game every year about this time when the county fair comes to town.

I go to the fair every year.   I love it.   I love the mother cow and her two-day old calf, the lopped-eared bunnies, the prize winning jams and cakes, the pig races, the blue ribbon quilts, the fried foods, and laughing hysterically on the Tilt-A-Whirl with my children.

Simply put, I love everything about the fair except one thing... the clown in the dunking booth.  You know the one.  He hurls insults at people as they walk by so they will stop and try to knock him into the water by hitting a target with a baseball.  Every year, I try to sneak around the crowd so he can't see me.  I fear his name calling.

The only time I have ever stopped anywhere near him was when my husband took a try at him and quickly dropped him in the water with one swift pitch.  I watched proudly from afar so I wouldn't catch one of his insults.

This year, I went to the fair with my children.  We enjoyed all the things I love.  We petted the animals in Old McDonald's Farm, we perused the homemade quilts and baked goods, we ate deep fried Oreos, and we laughed hysterically on the Tilt-A-Whirl.  But as we were leaving, we had to walk by the dreaded dunking booth.

And that's when I heard him yell in his horrible, annoying voice, "Hey skinny."

Who me? Was he talking to me?

I slowed my pace a little and turned my head slightly toward him and he yelled again, "Yea, I'm talking to you, skinny." I walked on by and turned to my daughter and she confirmed, "He was talking to you."

I've had a change of heart about that game.  I may just spend the next year working on my pitching skills.  Turns out, the best compliment I've ever received was actually an insult from my new best friend, the clown in the dunking booth at the fair.

I like you now.