July 19th 2008 11:32 pm
A slightly weird thing’s happened to me often enough lately that I need to somehow process it. No, not weird like the dream I had earlier this week when a very Willie Nelson looking Merle Haggard wished a happy wedding on a coworker of mine and then accused me of Bogarting his impromptu concert in a Boston food court*. Weird in that people refer to me in ways I don’t think of for myself.
(Potentially mind-bleach necessitating comments follow, a break is provided for people who have not the slightest need to imagine me with a shirt off)
Twice today my build was referred to as being twig-like. From a couple family members I’ve gotten “and Scott can eat just anything he wants, he’s so thin.” I’ve had a few people at work ask me if I was a runner in high school**, or otherwise made it clear that I looked like a runner.
By my own personal history, I’m doing pretty well. I’m not the fairly ridiculous 150 pounds that I was a couple months into my short FedEx employment, but I’m far from the 38″ waist wearing 240+ that I was less than 5 years ago. What that translates to is looking vaguely decent, I guess, in my normal slightly baggy clothing (a holdover from being, at best, slightly portly for my entire life), and seeing things that just can’t be unseen when I’m in front of the mirror after the morning shower. There are places that jiggle that shouldn’t, especially on a 6′2″, 185 lb person.
So with that, it’s really, really, deeply weird and disconcerting to have people tell me that I resemble a twig when a large portion of my mental image has me as being more trunk. I’m always left too stunned at the apparent alternate world that person is living on to appropriately reply. Plus the only reply that comes to mind quickly is the ever annoying brush off of “Oh no, I’m fat!” Really, there are few responses more annoying to a “you’re thin!” compliment than telling the complimenter that they’re wrong. Looking like an attention starved moron isn’t on my list of Things To Do. I’d rather watch Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog again. Of course, I’d watch that again over doing a lot of things. Anyway, I’m fully cognizant that this is a rather nice problem to have. I just have to, at some point, slim down my mental self-size, and let other options expand from there. I just have not even the foggiest how to go about doing that, especially when, well, jigglage.
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* I wish I could find a non-awkward way of sharing this with the dreamee, because I think it’s downright hilarious. I imagine that she’d find it mildly creepy.
** I nearly choke on laughter at this one.
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