And that, in and of itself, is an odd thing to know about myself, because for years I couldn’t stand facial hair. Not a goatee, not a moustache, not the hint of a 5 o’clock shadow.

It seems that, without even realizing it, though, that I’ve changed my mind on the issue. Out of nowhere it seems I sprouted a full beard, and kept it.

Until it started itching, and I had no choice but to shave it.

When I did, I realized why I’d allegedly grown one in the first place: I was fat. 

Somehow, maybe even overnight, fat entered my body and built a food court. I quickly grew bloated and stayed that way (I just saw the camp pictures to prove it). I swelled around my neck, and jaw, and most predominantly around my stomach. And trust me, if I could grow a beard down there, I would.

Because that’s what beards are meant for: hiding fat.

Although, that secret is out…everyone knows the benefits of facial hair. If only there were a way to market it to women that made the idea of facial hair feminine and comely, there’d be not one hairless face in this country.

This is on my mind of course because today my beard started itching again, and I know the only course of action will be to shave it. I’m sitting here trying to think of creative manscaping techniques that would both relieve me of the constant irritation the hair causes my face and yet, still retain the illusion that I’m not as fat as I think I am.

Like you, I think I’m far heavier than I know I am. It’s easier to think the worst than to recognize the truth. Always has been.

But, thinking won’t change a thing, won’t lose a pound. That, I’ll have to do the hard way, the old-fashioned-elbow-grease-pretend-you’re-really-doing-it-for-your-blood-pressure-which-has-contributed-to-the-early-onset-of-diabetes way.

I hate this way. But, there you go. There you have it.

I’m not sure I can shave my face into what I did last week. Last week I tried a soul patch which I thought was rather sexy, but good grief, it elicited many unexpected, sexual responses from people who saw me and my _______. (Sorry, I just can’t repeat what one person called it).

I guess everything’s not ‘’a cigar,” huh.  If we built this city on rock and roll, then we constructed the suburbs out of Grade A, pre-Fab innuendo. 

And as good as I think I look in a beard, it comes with some regrets.

For instance, most people think I don’t look good in a beard. That’s hard. Worse, my nephews don’t like to hug me now because the beard is scratchy; it’s very difficult to hold a toddler in your arms, to hug him, when he’s pulling with all his three-year-old might away from your face and your “cheek needles.” Oh and then there’s this:  The other day I was eating lunch, a sandwich with mayonnaise, mustard, the works, and was very absorbed in both my work and food.  A woman whom I didn’t know approached me and told me something else I also didn’t know: I had a glob of mayonnaise hanging on for dear life in my beard, below my chin.  Like a marshmallow.

Yet another Good Samaritan.

I wiped it away, thanked her, and immediately became embarrassed. Had she not said anything, I would have walked right into my meeting, unaware that I’d be wearing a small part of my Blue Plate Special.

It’d be different if I could wear fat well, like my mother.

Or, if, as I overheard in a conversation today, I had “a tan.” The exact comment was “something, something, no, no, I disagree. You can’t be fat unless you’re tan. Otherwise, it just won’t work.”

I often wonder why I’m obsessed with fat and body image, my previous eating disorders aside. And I think I’ve made myself believe it wasn’t about control as much as stability. Being thin, like I was as a child, was akin to being put into protective custody. (Well, that, and the fact that I’m too cheap to buy new clothes, so the ones I do wear remain a size too small).

But what about now that I’m an adult? What about now that I’m more or less stable, and for that matter, in control?  Because leading up to this mountain-top experience of being a responsible adult, I did a complete 180, and gained all that weight back and more. Gaining weight made those around me happy, but I was still miserable.

And fat. And un-tanned. 

Still am.

Except…I’m not miserable. Because I had an epiphany awhile back, about fat.

So, no, I’m not miserable. Just a healthy eater. And cook. And tennis player. And director. And writer. Friend. Confidante. Explorer. Bon Vivant. Lover. Reader. Jokester. Curmudgeon. Son. Uncle. Nephew. Diplomat. Arbiter. Actor. 

Person.

Human.

Which, just from the size of that partial list above, is hard to be—remembering all the things we are, all the people that we become on a daily basis. I mean, it’s easy to forget who all you are sometimes and get stuck on those parts we feel unable to change or change quickly enough, like weight.

But it’s so important to be reminded of a vital, crucial truth—body image, weight, those are only parts of the whole.

So, I’m fat. Ok, or overweight, whatever. In truth, all I have to do is step back and look at the bigger picture to see that being “fat” is really just a small part of it.

And to know that I don’t have to sit there and stare at that particular corner of the picture, all day.

Please, how could I?  For crying out loud, I’m a Cook-Writer-Jokester-Lover-Tennis Player, I’ve got work to do.

Don’t you?

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“What…did you…say?” I implored of him.

“Coffee,” he responded, and then with a nod of the head as if recognizing that he’d forgotten the magic word, added, “pease?”

It’s always precious when the little ones remember that fading concept known as “manners.” But, precious aside, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. I went in search of his mother.

She wasn’t a bit thrown off by what I felt had been a rather strange request coming from a toddler.

Oh yes, she said, he loves it. Drink a cup a day, if I’d let him.

Surely you don’t, I said.

“Nah,” she replied, “I don’t have the time to make it in the morning.”

Oh, well, thank god for that.

“How did he even get started with coffee?” I continued.

“I have no idea,” she said.

My guess, though, if I had to give one, would involve a caffeine-addicted mother, a squalling baby, and a free pacifier.  We’ve all been the victim of pacifier-popping. In my family, it’s worse than pills. We were our own Valley of the Dolls, and, I mean, let’s be honest, we were also beautiful babies. I’m sure one afternoon, she found herself with a screaming kid and cup of joe, and before you know it, the pacifier is dipped in the cup and ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom, another barista is born.

“No idea. Huh,” I repeated.

I then went to the kitchen for an extra-large helping of Nana’s famous chocolate cobbler and waddled on back to the dining room, where, not more than five minutes later, my other nephew (step-nephew, actually), Isaac, a mature four-year-old if ever there was one, came and stood gracefully in the doorway connecting the dining room and the kitchen and announced that he would like to “make a pot of coffee.”

If only someone had had a camera to take a picture of my face at that moment.

His father said, “Isaac, now let’s wait a minute. We’re not all on dessert.”

Was that a slam to me? I eat fast, I’m sorry.

I looked at Isaac and said, “Do you even know how to spell your name, yet?”

“Yes, I do, and in cursive.” And with that, he slid into the shadow of the refrigerator. (It’s on account of where the refrigerator sits in relation to the door).

Am I missing something, here? Have children been drawn to the lure of coffee since time immemorial and I just didn’t know? I personally have never cared for it.

It’s not my kind of bitter.

Plus, it seems so unhealthy a habit, but then again, our first milk was hardly from our mothers. More likely, it came from the teat of Lipton. When we were weaned off our bottles, chances are they were full of sweet tea.

Besides, and you can trust me on this, it’s more than a little unsettling to have a four-year-old ask if you “want decaf or regular.”

Of course, only Marsha and I had anything really “anti-coffee” to say about this trend, whether it’s global or intra-family. Neither one of us drinks it.

Not so for the others in my immediate family. Several make a pot a day just for the smell of it; it signals morning. The rest of them would construct gated communities in their own cups of coffee—for crying out loud, it’s an ancient form of currency. That’s why I qualified it with the adjective “gated.”

Apparently, there is such a thing as a coffee connoisseur. And a coffee snob.

Amanda, for instance—more the connoisseur than the snob. But then you have people like Dodie who mainstreams her java tastes to whatever Starbucks says works for that week. Except during Christmas. She doesn’t care for their flavor-making experiments during the holidays.

I hadn’t realized the dominating pull of coffee for table conversation, though. People may not know what to do about the current Gulf Oil Crisis, or if they still like Obama, but god knows, they’ve got something to say about the quality of black gold.

And we got stuck on that for awhile, despite the fact that I’d been trying desperately to steer the point back to my original concern: children who drink coffee.  But that seemed such a minor issue to the rest of the family.

So what if they drink coffee. It keeps them quiet, I was told.

And oddly enough, it did. They didn’t get hyper; they didn’t burst into an all-consuming ball of energy and run themselves into butter like Samba. They sat, in the den, in individual recliners and watched Handy Manny. (Though, to be honest, Wynn did pitch a fit when he was given his coffee in his sippy cup; he refused to drink it unless it was put in a “real cup.” Consequently, he got one, with its own little saucer).

I was, I’ll admit, amazed that that was the result. I expected, barely two sips in, for them to become Satan’s little helpers, running and screaming, as they were wont to do, often enough, without coffee.

Which begged the real question: What on earth are they eating and drinking the rest of time that would allow coffee, of all things, to calm them down?

No one had an answer to that.

As a matter of fact the only person who said anything at all was Nana, who after a few thoughtful seconds, said, “So when did Isaac learn to make coffee?”

After that, I ate my chocolate cobbler in silence.

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Having played tennis most of my life, I am more than well aware that I have a good, nice, firm butt. Like, I could point my butt toward a bowl of walnuts and they’d crack immediately.  Out of pure-D respect.

I mean, facts are facts.

Now, I don’t often talk about my butt because a) it isn’t tasteful to do so, and b) I mean, look at it. I don’t really have to talk about it. It’s a little gift from Up Above (two, if you count my I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter legs) that I have somehow managed to take care of…where other things I let fall by the side.

That’s also a fact, I’m afraid.

The point is: I have, all in all, a magnificent butt.

And usually, I give it its due credit. When it behaves.

And I do what I can to take care of it; though I wish I could get out on the tennis courts more regularly, these days.  I frequent the gym (well, mostly just the tanning bed located at the gym); I’ve bought the specially designed Shape Up shoes that are meant to help aid and tone the buttocks area when doing mundane activities such as walking to the copier, grading papers, and racing your swivel chairs down the long, lonely hallway outside your office with a select few of your really cool colleagues.

Apparently, though, my butt had other ideas as to how it wished to spend its time: butt-dialing.

For starters, I have no qualms sharing with you the fact that I am not a fan of my own cell phone. As a matter of fact, next to Hitler, the pending Apocalypse, and people bad-mouthing the good honest work of Jamie Gertz on the ill-fated sitcom “Still Standing,” there is nothing I hate more than my Blackberry.

Had I only known at the time of purchase the sheer hatred I’d carry in my heart for that dreaded piece of smart plastic, I’d never have gotten it.  Had I further known the secret love affair my phone would have with my butt, I’d have taken the time to practice my once-perfect penmanship and reverted to that old art form known as letter writing.

However, I was already a Verizon contract-player, so I held out in the hopes that I was finally and successfully integrating myself into Modern Society by getting the next Big Thing in the world of cellular communication.

I have since 86’ed that notion.

I’m six months into my torrid relationship with the Qualcomm 3G CDMA model of the Blackberry Storm, and am more than ready for the clouds to clear. Of course, to ensure a proper storm passing, one must be ready to break the contract, and that costs a pretty penny.

At first, I took Blackberry aggravations in stride. Because the root of the problem seemed to be at hand: my hand. I hit everything but the right button and became accidentally more intimate with the Voice Activation Command than voice mail.

It was a real talent I had, there. I do everything backwards, I guess.

But, never did I expect that all along my beautiful butt was waiting for a chance to betray me.

I have, for as long as I can remember, never, never put items in my pockets. I couldn’t stand it. It felt so weighted to have coins, keys, the like, in my pockets.  So, why I ever started putting my phone in my pockets (front and back, mind you!) I simply cannot answer.  But, I did.

That’s when the trouble started.

I have to date butt-dialed twenty-two people. One person, my friend  Abigail, has been butt-dialed no less than six of those times. She’s the first name in my Address List. I can only imagine the strange, unintelligible messages she’s been left by my butt.

She did have the decency to call back, though, and leave a message for me, after the fourth butt-dial. “Kris, so good to hear from you, I hope everything’s OK, you’ve called a lot recently. Let me know.”

Bless her heart. (I hate you, Butt).

Back in the shameful days of my heavy drinking, I had a bad habit of “befriending” everyone at the bar. This led, of course, to many random exchanges of phone numbers. Some with real names assigned to them; others with, what I can only guess, were nicknames I’d given them at the time of the second or third round.

My butt knew this, and as payback, has also butt-dialed them. For kicks, I guess.  This has led to viciously punctuated text messages along the lines of WTF?!? Who is this?! and so on.

I’ve never been one to like a phone. I’m harder to track down with a cell than without. I just liked the convenience of a cell phone.  You know, in case I ever get lost backpacking through the Appalachians, my cell phone would have GPS; or, if I needed to immediately rifle through endless Facebook updates, then, Voila!, there’s my cell, ready and at the helm.

But for talking…I can do without that part, though, apparently, I don’t even have to worry about dialing should the need to talk to someone arise. My butt is more than happy to do it for me.

I don’t know how to prevent this, so instead, I keep my phone far, far away from me at all times, now. I let it ride in the passenger seat, seatbelt on, on my way to work.  I’ve put an extra chair in front of my desk, and there it sits all day, while I’m in my office. I don’t touch it unless I have to. 

Its ringer is on Vibrate because the other sounds scare me. I’m in search of a name to call this so I can at least have a viable diagnosis for this newfound phobia.

It’s not just butts you have to worry about these days, either. I have a chilling tale to share with you that involves another unbelievable betrayal.

Purse-dialing.

Several years back, I was driving a friend of mine and myself to a last-minute dinner, in town. We’d worked hard all day and were bent on rewarding ourselves with a tasty morsel or two in a local diner.

Two things had happened to her that week that she was eager to share with me: her cell phone purchase, and the introduction of a new man into her life.

She was ecstatic.

She was, however, still married.

We were barely a few miles down the road when a cat darted in front of my vehicle. We lurched forward in our seats, her purse fell from her lap, and the contents of it (and god were there contents of it) spilled all over the floorboard.

She picked them up, and continued talking—about the new man. In detail. Full. Graphic. Detail.

I did what I could to share her enthusiasm. I did what I could to not be judgmental. She was, after all, a grown woman.

Fate intervened, though. Because somehow in the course of dropping her purse and picking it up, the phone was dialed. The number? Her husband’s. Who then heard every word she had to say.

Now, that, my friends, is a confession. No?

Thank god I don’t have a purse because I’m having enough trouble with my butt.

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Which has kept me up at nights, uneasy and nauseous. I couldn’t eat much of anything yesterday; I had to practically force myself to eat the leftover cheese sticks, a bowl of soup, and half a chocolate bar (with hazelnuts).

So, I did.

But, I couldn’t bear to go another night with fitful sleep; so last night, to combat this, I took a Phenergan.  It’s a pill prescribed for upset stomachs, etc. We fear I might have IBS. (That’s quite a conversation-starter, there, is it not?)

It took a couple of hours, but it did the trick: it settled my stomach enough and made me drowsy enough to fall asleep and stay that way through most of the night. Though I fell asleep on the couch and as is the usual piper’s fee for that, I woke up with aching hips.

I also fell asleep with the heating pad on, which, the warning tag clearly indicates, is a no-no.

And the dream I had? Well…it was perfectly Joyce-ian, ironically comic and lengthy.  As most of my dreams tend to be. I was, it seems, in my own version of Finnegans Wake, one that I am rightfully going to call, Phenergan’s Wake.

I swear that pun came to me just now.

(And I don’t care if you don’t believe me).

Here’s the dream, in two parts.

PART A: “Keep it down, out there, I’m trying to drink my shower!”

I’m the age I am now, but I’m back in my hometown, and I’m running late to church. I’m supposed to help Nana with the dinner, the setup, etc.

We often would eat dinner at the church, especially if it’s during Revival.

Nana has opted to cook for everyone in the church, by herself, and I have been given the task of setting the tables. Because it is a revival, we have invited everyone in the world. I am responsible for setting what appears to be 1,000 tables. All of which require linens and freeze-dried, hand-painted rose petals.

I have overslept. The only recourse to this is to grab my clothes, which were in the microwave, warming, and to shower at the church.

So, this is what I do.

The shower at the church (a shower which does not exist in real life) is located at the back of the old Fellowship Hall, by the nursery. It is a very tiny shower. And though my body is completely covered by the small shower curtains, my head is not and I am able to talk to all the people who walk by, on their way to the new Fellowship Hall where dinner will be served.

Except, I’m not talking to these people.

I’m yelling at them to “keep it down!” I’m angry at them. They keep asking me to do things, to explain things, to answer questions. I want them to hush because I’m trying to not only take a shower, but to drink it as well from a plastic cup that appeared out of nowhere (and yet that didn’t seem odd because doesn’t everyone take a plastic cup to the shower with them?) because I realized while bathing that I was bathing in holy water.

Which, for the record, has never seen the light of day in a Baptist church.

I somehow put it together that I’m not really in a bathroom, per se, but I’m in a secondary type of Baptistery. I’m showering in a spare, if you will, in case the actual Baptistery in the sanctuary was to break.

I realize I’m shouting to distract the people, the congregation, from noticing that I’m sacrilegiously cleaning myself…with holy water that has found its way in from some Catholic tributary.

They don’t seem to notice, though, or they don’t care…either way, the big problem hasn’t occurred to me yet.

When I’m finished, it hits me: I don’t have a towel.

[NOTE: I wake up in here, somewhere, and go to the bathroom. In a rare event, when I return to the couch, as opposed to my bed because I do not think clearly at night, I continue with the same dream].

PART B: “The turkey isn’t done until the vest matches Diane’s earrings.”

We’re now in the new Fellowship Hall. All the tables are set with linens, rose petals, water glasses, forks. Everyone is in line, and they’re all very excited to eat. It’s as if they’ve not eaten in days.

And they haven’t.

I see a clock on the wall that tells me we’ve been at church for four days. Four solid days. (Of course, some revivals have been known to last even longer – though they allow you time to eat in between sermons).

Nana has truly outdone herself, here. She’s cooked everything known to man: dressing, meatloaf, fried chicken, pies, creamed corn, and for the pièce de résistance, a mammoth turkey.

It’s easily the size of a Tercel.

And it’s wearing a thick, wool vest, stark white…with three marbles for buttons.

She looks at the vest and then shakes her head.  She puts it back in the oven, which is sitting above the sink. As a matter of fact, the knob that turns on the hot water, also sets the temperature for the oven.

Everyone groans. They’re very hungry, and she’s not letting anyone fix their plate until the turkey’s done.

“You know the rule.” She says, “The turkey’s not done until its vest matches Diane’s earrings.”

Diane apologizes. She hasn’t worn any earrings today.

[And this is where I woke up].  

It’s the first dream I’ve had in a long time that I fully remembered the following morning. I’m not saying that Phenergan is the answer to my restless eyes; I have no desire to be a substance abuser…again.

Though the last time I abused any substance to the point of becoming problematic I was ten and the substance was mashed potatoes, insofar as that counts as a substance.

I loved mashed potatoes. (Potatoes in general, really). And once when I was ten, I ate so many that I vomited. Right there at the Sunday dinner table, in front of Nana.

That’s what I thought, at least, that it was the fault of the mashed potatoes.

The truth was that I was in the process of getting the stomach flu. As you might imagine I assumed it was due to the excessive influx of mashed potatoes I’d consumed that caused the illness. The doctor assured me it was not the mashed potatoes.

I think in lieu of a traditional upbringing, rooted as such in the normal definition of a family with a Father, Mother, and 2.5 children, that familial love was sublimated by food and food preparation. I think it’s the reason for my love/hate relationship with cooking to this day.

Or, maybe I was just an ignorant, greedy child.

I couldn’t look at a potato for months without blushing.

***

Though, as you know, that is certainly not the case today.

Not with potatoes…and not, I pray, with the Phenergan.

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And it’s not that I mind, not one bit; it’s how we’ve become close that I find amusing and uncomfortable.

It involves Miller Light.

Sort of.

Before I go any further, I want you to be plainly aware that this is not about an academic caste system.

And I have a previous story to prove it.

Though I rarely tell this story from my Disney Days, prior to having the high-class job of character entertainment and the allure of being an Attractions Host at Disney Studios, I will come clean and tell you that the first job I was offered, through the Walt Disney College Program, or the CP, was that of Custodian.

I well remember the interview.

“Hi, my name is Kris, and I like people. If I’m hired to work at Disney, I want to be around people.”

“Ok, Kris. That’s easy enough, then. Your job will be Janitorial Host.”

Placing the word “host” at the end of it, however, didn’t make it any better. Also, people using the bathroom were not the sort of people I had in mind.

I still took the job, because I was eager to leave Mississippi. I was just past nineteen. A week into the actual position, where I was not only seeing what I had to do but smelling it as well, was enough for me. I marched right up to Christine at the Backstage Employment Office, she was the CP Coordinator, and told her that to be “quite honest, the magic had been ruined for me.”

I simply wanted to go home.

I also lied and told her that I wasn’t going to get any college credit at all if I didn’t do something that was, in some small way at least, theatre-related.

This was apparently the absolute-perfect-thing-to-say because the next thing I knew, I was ushered through Disney’s  “fun job doors,”  where I found myself in a new, cool and hip, cross-utilization program learning how to be both an Attractions Host at the Great Movie Ride (I won an award in this position, by the way) and in Guest Relations, both of which led to my brief tenure as a candidate for those Disney characters in the 5’9” height range: Pluto, Eeyore, Tigger, et al.

The magic had been restored.

However, for a solid week beforehand, it had been a torturous, hellish keg of cherry-scented chemicals, urinal cookies, and scrub brushes.

So, believe me, I have full respect for janitors.

I also understand their dire need to satisfy their curiosity; surely your Mama’s told you to be careful with what you throw out, right? U.L. certainly has, and for good reason.

A reason which is responsible for how I came to know on a first-name-sometimes-I-might-give-you-an-on-the-spot-nickname basis with the janitor at the college, where I work.

She’s taken to calling me “Red,” lately, due to the unfortunate dye-job from a few weeks back. I call her Georgia, because I don’t know why. I guess I thought that was her name, originally, and it’s stuck.

Georgia and I met last semester. She has an erratic, irregular work schedule. I have often come to work to find her in my office, at 8:00 in the morning, sweeping my carpet. I don’t think she has a vacuum? Or, perhaps, it is too loud and so she chooses not to use it.

I have sensitive ears myself. When I listen, at all. Whatever the reason, she only has a broom.

Other times, I’ve been typing away like mad trying to figure out the various ends and outs of the paperwork side of my job and she’s just let herself in (she has a master key, of course) and busied herself either with trying to get to my trash can (snuggly squeezed under my middle desk) or draped herself over one of my many chairs to eat Ruffles.

It was annoying, at first. Now, I’ve merely gotten used to it.

But here’s how we met: Miller Light.

When I started working here at what will soon become my former job, I would stop on my way in, nearly every day, at the Scooba Junction, for Red Bull. Because it’s legal. And it gives me energy. I’d say it gives me wings, as that’s how the commercial goes, but if it ever did, they were always clipped…like, after about twenty minutes.

So, I’d have to buy more than one can, sugar-free, of course, just to get through the top half of my day. I easily went through ten or eleven, if not more, a week.

I’m guessing here, but I’m going to say that at Scooba Junction they have only one price-gun, I’m assuming that’s what you call it (you know that dispenser they use to place the sticker price on each item?), and apparently that one price-gun comes from Miller Light because all the Red Bulls I’ve ever bought, as well as the Cheez-Its and Chips Ahoy, have all been emblazoned with stickers that are labeled “Miller Light.”

I’d noticed it a hundred times, myself. But, thought nothing of it.

They place these stickers over the pull tab, so in order to open the drink, you have to remove the sticker.

Stickers that I then discarded in the trash, either by dropping them in or sticking them to the side of the plastic garbage bag.

Again, thinking nothing of it.

By my third week here, Georgia had become overly concerned.

She met me outside my office door, one afternoon, and asked me in a polite way if she could talk to me about something.

I said, Sure.

She stepped into the office and pointed at my heavily stickered garbage can. (Pointing, by the way, is not polite. That’s Disney 101).

I felt as if this were a test of some sort and that, even though it appeared to have an obvious answer, I was going to fail it.

“Yes?” I remember saying.

“You really drink that much?”

Assuming she meant Red Bull, I said, “I do. Honey, I need it.”

She was dumbstruck. It dawned on me then; she wasn’t looking at the empty cans. She was looking at the stickers.

God only knows what would have happened had I not had a Red Bull sitting on my desk that I’d not opened yet.  It was my only proof. She might have turned me in.

Either that, or she was wanting to go twosies on a six-pack.

We have a good laugh about it, these days. It’s a good, funny, strangely comforting memory to have.

As a matter of fact, we were laughing about it just now.

Because she was drinking coffee, sitting on the steps outside my office, when I got to work this morning.

…if only it had been a Red Bull, this would have all tied together.

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Meaning, since confessing to you about my lust and love for the said potato log, yesterday afternoon, I’ve not been able to think about anything else except food.

And so, at the risk of offending some of you, I feel I’ve no choice to move myself past this obsessive food-thinking other than to write about it. So, I’m going to spend the next few moments with you, making one confession after another about a few dishes, recipes, snacks, and various other, sundry foods that I not only grew up with, but that, I feel, have defined who I am, today, in large part.

I hope you like me by the time I’m done.

I know some of my culinary cred is going to be challenged, disputed, if not taken away from me completely. Because, Lord knows, I have a very distinctive palate. (Maybe, you’ll all take pity on me and send me recipes for the foods you think I should be eating, instead).

Either way, I think it’ll be worth it, talking about this.

Now, I can’t remember what her name is, but I do recall a random TV show on the Food Network that I was watching, oh this has been months back, in which this philosopher (a food philosopher, mind you; I know of only one other in the country, and that is my good friend Dr. Glenn Kuehn) made this profound statement, “Our history, [the only one that matters], is right there on our plate.”

It is to that sentiment that I, then, share with you, a little of the History that’s found its way onto My Plate, over the years. I’ll try not to bore you, and I think the only way to not bore you is to limit my plate to a regular-size, Noritake informal dinner plate: it should only hold five items, and no item should touch the edge.

(Note: This list is not vegetarian).

Let’s get started, shall we?

1. The Banana Sandwich. Contrary to the legendary gullet-stylings of Mississippi’s own Elvis Presley, we did not, in my family, follow suit with his particular banana sandwich design. Instead, we would often take two slices of white bread, usually Sunbeam, and slather it with mayonnaise. To this, we sliced a fresh banana, added cheese, and smooshed the whole thing together. I would, on average, eat five or more of these a week, all through grade school and beyond. U.L. started this internecine tradition, and with the exception of the kind of cheese, the glorious tastiness of this family snack has stayed relatively unchanged between his house and Nana’s. Sure, sure, you are probably already cringing, and that’s fine. I might, too, had it not started so early in my life. Every time I make a banana sandwich to this day, I can’t help but think about being a little kid, sitting by U.L. on the kitchen counter, oozing mayonnaise onto my knuckles, looking out the picture window at all the birds and the “idiot-fools, drag racing down the road. I’ve a mind to go call the sheriff, right this second […]” It’s more than a sandwich, you see; it’s the threat of a highway patrol encounter. Those were the days…
2. Biscuit Pudding. What, you say? I thought you hated pudding, Kris. And I still do, but this isn’t really a pudding. It’s a family secret recipe. My first exposure to the kitchen came, literally, at the heels of my great grandmother, Tigi. Her real name was Tiny Gertha. That was her real name and she lived up to it, all four feet, eight inches of her. She was born in the latter 1890s. And to this day, I love the idea that I am living in the 21^st century, but knew someone born in the 19^th century. It lends credibility to my old soul. She never used the first measuring cup, blender, food processor, or microwave. Everything she measured, she did so by using her hand or finger: to the first knuckle, a teaspoon. To the second knuckle, a tablespoon. She cooked by use of dashes, pinches, smidges, bits, and the evergreen rule of “Well, what’s it smell like?” A favorite dessert of hers, having grown up in the gumbo mud of the Delta, was biscuit pudding. The trick was to use stale biscuits. She’d line her trusty iron skillet with the crusty, tough buttered bottoms of the days-old biscuits, pour over that her own sugar cream syrup with the juice of whatever fruit might be around (usually apple or, pear, or if without fruit, Blackburn molasses), crumble the biscuit tops into the mixture, and bake it, like everything else: “on hot and until it smelled right.”
3. Nana’s meatloaf. I’m not sure what magic she uses when she makes this but I do know the process calls for it. That, and a good full morning of uninterrupted focus on her very specific mise en place. There was nothing easy about this meatloaf, but every inch of it was pure mouth ecstacy. In some order, the following went into the loaf: meat (beef and deer, sometimes turkey), green peppers, onions (sweet only, Vidalia above all else), red peppers, Worcestershire, eggs, day-old bread crumbs (homemade, soaked in butter), milk, and some other things. She’ll tell what the ingredients are, she says, but I know for a fact that she leaves a few choice ones out. Still, I have made this replica of hers a thousand times (before The Change, a.k.a. vegetarianism) and it’s never worked. Hers would melt into itself, and in the cooking process, some juicy, meaty pieces would slide off and into the corner, collecting what, even to this day, I can only describe as a liquid Shangri-la. I miss this dish more than anything else, and harbor about a quarter cup of jealousy when she serves it on Sundays.
4. Black-eyed peas and mayonnaise. Here it is again, that absolute necessity of the southern kitchen: mayonnaise. I mean, what’s better? Nothing. Mayonnaise covers all the bases whether it’s in a dip or flying solo. I realize, looking back, that I had (have) perhaps an unnatural kinship with this vinegar and egg by-product, but say what you will…it got me to eat my peas.  I don’t know if it’s the creamy romance that results from the mixing of the earthy pea flavor and the tang of the mayonnaise, or if it just grossed my sisters out, but it stuck. Many is the night that I was found, sneaking into the kitchen, uncapping the Tupperware bowl of peas and glopping a tablespoonful of mayonnaise on top of the gelatinous mass of legumes. I was afraid of the stove for many years, so until the microwave arrived, I generally ate this snack cold. Thank god for Kenmore.
5. U.L.’s Tuna Salad. Only U.L. could take something as easy-to-make as tuna salad and turn it into an art installation. U.L., the youngest child of Tigi, took after his mother in many ways. Despite being the baby, and thus the farthest from her culturally, he let nothing stand in his way of becoming as creatively frugal as she was. Granted, he’s allowed a can opener, a microwave, and a Quik-Chop in the house, he still uses only one large mixing bowl, and a knife that came over on the Mayflower. I can’t argue with him, though when a) the bowl and knife have withstood the test of time, coming from an era when things were made well and with genuine craftsmanship, and b) the tuna salad is so deliciously made with love it knocks out the fish smell. This is not your mama’s tuna salad; it’s my uncle’s, and that means, it ain’t fast food: boiled eggs; an onion; pimentos or Ro-Tel; a handful (i.e., cupful) of homegrown, homemade sweet pickles that, I should add, live in a butter churn kilned by my great-grandfather and hasn’t seen the sun since 1944; and a mayonnaise-based cream sauce that includes the juice from the tuna, a little paprika, a little lemon-pepper, vinegar…salt, and pepper. The last two, he says, you add just for taste, but if you do that, I’ll tell him.

Now, go have a great day.

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I don’t think so. No.

I. Don’t. Think. So.

I am, personally, mad-dog in love with the potato log. I look upon its tasty goodness as a drowning man would a life raft.  (I wrote that and then had this visual of being a drowning man and seeing a life raft and then, in that life raft I saw, like,  hundreds of potato logs and my heart started beating really fast and I almost had to take half a Xanax).

So, you know…I really like a potato log. It has taken a place of supreme necessity in my life, the potato log.

It has become—a reward.

For what, you ask? Why, for driving to work each morning.

Still confused?

Here, let me explain:  See, I hit this same halfway point (of melodramatic ennui) every morning.  This halfway point is roughly next to that strange Mexican restaurant that might also be a hotel at the second four-way stop-that’s-really-a-six-way-stop between Brooksville and Macon.

For some reason, each morning when I pull up to this engineering near-failure of the MDOT, I’m tempted to call it quits, throw in the towel, or turn the car around and go back (something I never do). And each morning, I have to force myself to take a large-down-to-my-heels breath and say, “Kris, you can’t get a potato log if you don’t get to Scooba. That’s where the potato logs are, Kris. Scooba. So, get it together and drive on.”

It’s a successful piece of motivation if for this one reason only: I’ve tried the potato logs at every other available gas station between here and Scooba (even the pitiful, dilapidated one that, at first glance, would appear to be a prime locale for those in search of the White Rabbit, but is indeed a usable gas station. The sign practically yells it at you, “Yes! We are open! Yes!” They did not, however, have potato logs).

And I did not stay there after realizing that fact.

Truth is, they just seem to fry a potato log better in whatever the oil is at Gas Station #3, also known as Scooba Junction, with its little train logo on the building.

And no…I don’t want to know what’s in the oil.

I just know that if I want a potato log the way God intended, I have no choice but to go all the way to Scooba. (Well, that and also I work in Scooba).

Sigh.

Today was one of those days that nearly won out over my want of a paycheck. Today hurt. I have never wanted to get in my car less than I did this morning, and that’s counting days I’ve driven through tornado watches, fog advisories, and goats.

I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t unhappy, I was simply done. That’s what I realized this morning.

I was simply done.

I couldn’t fathom another hour and some such minutes behind the wheel of my car having to share the road…or share, period. I’m through with it, mentally. Why my body continues to go and drive to my office every day is beyond me.

I’m worn out with being a “roadie.” I’m tired of all the truck drivers; I’m tired of Miss Jesus Is My Co-Pilot who absolutely must drink her coffee while applying eye shadow at 83 MPH, and smoke. I’m tired of nose pickers, cell phone talkers, motor-mouth singers, speed demons, omni-blinkers, and the elderly.

I’m tired of all of them. All of these people who, I can only assume, wait every morning just for me, before pulling out from their respective driveways and back roads for the sole purpose of getting in my way.

As I slung my own car, Tigi, onto Highway 45, bright and early this morning, I slowed a teensy bit as I came up to the first (and last) exit that would allow me to easily wind my way back home, but I didn’t because a) I’m not independently wealthy so I have to work, and b) I was starving and I knew of only one thing that could satisfy it: potato logs.

So, I suckered myself into the drive.

Maybe I was hungrier than I thought, maybe I was eating out of anger and frustration, or maybe I’m really just a big, fat lovable porcine extra in Charlotte’s Web, but I bought six potato logs, each roughly the size of a firm banana.

I added to that order a Coke Zero, or if you prefer, Joke Zero, and three small plastic tubs of ranch dressing…and one of honey mustard.

I am not one ounce ashamed, nor do I have even a gram of guilt about it, either.

Instead, I savored each hot morsel of that salty tuber flesh, licked the tips of my mystery- greasy fingers, and for several long seconds, when I’d eaten all of them, sat back in my chair and wore the crumbs like a well-deserved Purple Heart.

Because teaching is hell, and war is hell, and if this were a valid and logical syllogism, then you could say that teaching is war.

And you have to fight a war in order to get a Purple Heart. Even if you’re wounding yourself by gorging on a sack full of what’s floating in a gas station’s back room Fry Daddy.

It’s a fitting metaphor, trust me. Around here, the battleground never flattens out; new trenches are dug every day, and the troops stay primed for ambush.

And me? I stand out like the sore thumb of a sitting duck trying desperately to teach them about Sophocles and pageant wagons.

Maybe by the end of the week we’ll at least be able to spell Sophocle.

I mean, Sophocles.

See what I’m saying?

You’d eat your way to a Purple Heart, too, I imagine.

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Amanda was recounting her recent trip to Boston, in which she was finally able to satisfy a small bit of her boundless love for ethnic foods: Cuban, German, Haitian, Indian, to name several.

I guess Boston has everything.

And as you might expect, the conversation stayed focused on the topic of food. That’s what happens when you’re with cultured people, eating cultured things such as Chivda sounds—for the record, I used Reduced Fat Jif, the crunchy kind—until there came the smallest lull, allowing Amanda to confess her exciting dietary adventures.

She’d been a tad antsy, eager to share.

So she did.

“I finally got to eat Ethiopian.”

This, of course, was roundly applauded, and with genuine interest, I began to ask for specifics. What was it like? Was it even real food? Because, aren’t they kind of known as a country without food?

I couldn’t imagine what they authentically ate, and I found it ironic that though the country itself is constantly on the verge of agricultural collapse and starvation, a few of them have managed to come to America and open up a restaurant to cook food for us.

Still, I honestly wanted to know what authentic Ethiopian food was like. I honestly wanted to know every detail about this particular dining experience.

So, she told me, us.

Apparently, they pile all their food on top of a large table of bread, and you eat everything in sight. Possibly, even the chair and napkin, should you be given one.

And also you use your hands.

I want to say “Gross!” but I wouldn’t mean it. Secretly, germ-conscious as I can be, I would love nothing more than to squish peas through my fingers, or to cup a handful of goat cheese up to my mouth and shove it in, sans-utensils.

But, and chide me later if you consider this misleading in retrospect, the conversation came to a full halt when Amanda replied that the food, the experience, the actual Ethiopian meal was…well, not authentic as much as it was authentic-ish.

Authentic-ish.

The word, in and of itself, isn’t really the issue, but that manmade suffix…is.

Because I hear it all the time.

My students, my friends, passers-by, that ridiculous trollop of a Wal-Mart Associate from last night who insisted on giving me a buggy despite the fact that I even took the time to tell her I was only getting a half-gallon of skim milk…that little -ish is everywhere.

We’ve become a society of opinionated adjective-pushers.

I mean, this, this, it’s becoming an epidemic. Or, epidemic-ish.

And yet, it’s complete and utter genius.

Because its overall purpose, I now see, is to function in daily conversation as a general whitewash. An excuse of non-description by engaging all descriptions. Tacking that –ish onto any and every word known to Man is both answering the question and closing the subject, at the same time.

My grandmother for years harped and nagged about the “ugliness” of people who cursed. Her reason: it negated their ability to find a creative way to express themselves. Instead of describing the pain, the event, the whatever, people would scream out one obscenity or profanity after another. If they’d take the time to think it through, blah, blah, blah…right?

That was my first reaction to this –ish business…until the other night.

Because really, what did I expect? They were Ethiopians living in America. Are they really going to go whole hog on the authenticity of the nutritional habits of their people? I doubt it. How could they? They’d probably be shut down by the FDA. They’ve done what all ethnic and cultural entrepreneurs have done when they emgirate: they Americanized.

Which, in turn, gives rise to the handiness of that little peckerwood of a suffix –ish. Because that was in fact the correct descriptor to her “cuisine experience.” She was eating authentic-ish Ethiopian food.

And the deeper beauty of –ish is that it isn’t relegated only to eating.

No, not by a long shot.

I teach students who appear to be serious-ish about passing, I’ve been in love-ish before, and god knows, I’ve spent a few too many nights, drunk-ish, texting everyone in my phone, even my mother, talking about any number of stupid things from recipes to recalling an old feud between me and a friend over a broken tambourine.

There are even days when I’m thankful for that little –ish.

When I’m just sick-ish instead of having the stomach virus. When I’m sad-ish but my heart’s not broken. When the day’s OK-ish, but it’s not bad.

You know what I’m talking about, and you agree. Don’t you?

At least, sort of-ish?

Yeah, I thought you would…even if -ish just a little.

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It involved the gym and twenty-two women.

I’d like to tell you about it, so I am.

I’ve been a faithful team player of a local gym for the past month.  It was part of a personal New Year’s resolution slash Christmas gift (from Amanda). And I’ve been a good lover to it. Three or four visits a week, and fully committed each visit, and giving 100% of my attention to her…you name it, and I’ve paid for it.

Admittedly, I was gone most of last week, so I hadn’t been courting her properly. Guilt got the better of my judgment, though, and I dragged myself, in a matching powder blue gym suit right down to my shoes, out into the cold and came knocking on her doors last night, around 6:00.

She had not waited, in faithful anticipation.

There were hundreds of people. Not a treadmill to be had for miles. So, I pretended to do other forms of exercise: I sat on the pull-every-chest-muscle-press-bench-couch-thing for a few minutes, fiddling with the weights, making lots of “workout” noises. I got up and wandered over to the this-is-really-for-my-thigh-muscles-and-not-an-invitation-chaise-lounge-machine and tried to use it, but I felt embarrassed sitting on it.

Then, I decided: Hey, just flip your routine.

Usually after a good thirty minute treadmill jog and walk (or jalk, as I call it), Amanda and I will head to a side room at the gym and do yoga. Well, she does yoga. I try and copy her. I do well enough on the Cobra; I’m less than appealing on the Downward Facing Dog, though I swear I’ve done that move a thousand times before.

I got off the thigh thing, and slipped off to the familiar side room to do my yoga-thing first. Surely, I thought, a treadmill will be available by the time I was through.

The room was empty, and quiet. I pulled my mat off the wall, took off my glasses which have a tendency to fly off my face with the tiniest bead of sweat, and began to do stretchy contortions. I don’t know what I was doing, but stretching in general just feels good.

I closed my eyes, and for a good solid five minutes, got my muscles into suggestive, cramping positions. Then, I began to notice a trickle of voices entering the room. But, I kept going. I focused. And then…more voices.

I was, you should know, over in the corner, where I usually stretch…far away from the one exit out of the room. This is important. Remember this.

More and more voices came into the room, and it became distracting, so I had little choice but to stop my stretching. I opened my eyes, reached for my glasses, and it was then that several horrible things began to occur simultaneously.

These horrors are in no particular order: 1) the room filled with women, 2) I was the farthest away from the exit door of anyone else in the room, 3) the tiny secret, closet door behind which the office lies, was flung open and a small woman emerged with such a force of energy that, in retrospect, my only regret was that she didn’t also come with an electrical outlet, 3) music on a decibel level of 247 instantly blared through the speakers, and 4) I knew then that I was trapped.

And by becoming trapped, I was thus committed to whatever fresh hell was about to happen to me.

It didn’t take long to figure out: the initial song stridently coming through the speakers had a beat that I think most would refer to as Latin, and a rumbling voice that garbled Spanish for the most part; though, the one word that I caught was one I’d heard a few nights earlier on an infomercial.

Zumba.

Dear god, I thought, I’m scared.

I had to think fast. I had to get to the exit and as soon as possible. I started to jet my butt to the left, where the door was, and was soundly singled out by Instructor Meredith, a.k.a. the Duracell, who loudly encouraged others to follow suit.

“He’s got the idea, ladies! Use what you got and go all out!!”

I had unknowingly “felt the beat,” in my dash for the door, appropriately enough to warrant a shout-out from the instructor. Everyone started gyrating in a similar manner. Had I been more successful, I suppose I would have led everyone out the door, where I was heading, but as it were, I merely fed fuel to the fire.

What to do?

I thought, Surely, this will only be a fifteen, twenty minute class, right? Surely, it’s a beginner’s class?

It was not.

There is no such thing as a beginner in Zumba. There is no beginning, middle, or end to Zumba. It simply is Zumba. And therefore, you simply do Zumba.

And Zumba hurts.

Twenty minutes came and went…slowly.

However, I was now a good ten feet closer to the door. But, there in the middle of the room, I ran into the mother of a friend of mine who was elated that I’d “no shame in doing this with a bunch of women,”

After hearing that, I was too affronted to give up.

Oh, it’s on, now, I thought. I’m sticking it out for the full half-hour class, for all the Men in the world. Ha. Talk to me about shame, please, I said to myself, I don’t know the meaning of the word shame.

I was wrong on both counts: I know shame very intimately, and the class was still in full swing, literally, after thirty minutes.

Initially, I was rather proud of myself. I managed to mambo, cha-cha, and salsa without much threat of physical danger. To myself or others. I was holding strong…until the forty minute mark.

It was then that I began to lose consciousness; nevertheless, my body would not surrender. I’d continued to merengue despite the stomach cramps; I’d bachata-ed through a throbbing ankle; I’d kept my tango to a crisp point even though my chest had been pulled over for speeding and was placed under cardiac arrest.

Through it all,  I stayed on my feet.

The young woman wearing the yellow Kappa Sig T-shirt was not so lucky. She fell. Right in the middle of the triple-count -Rumba-Paso-Doble-air-fisting-Lindy-Hop that was required of all during the alleged “cool down” period.

The woman next to me, all the while keeping time in her Reeboks, said, “Oh, no! Poor thing. Do we help her?”

To which I replied, “Shh. I don’t think we’re allowed to talk.”

After an hour (an hour!) the class dismissed. Those who hadn’t bruised a lung managed to smile and speak, pretending they would come back on Wednesday. Me, personally, I don’t know how I left the room. I couldn’t feel my legs, my arms, my neck, my body.

Until this morning.

I woke up in so much pain that I was certain I’d undergone an emergency appendectomy that also involved a heart transplant and the removal of kidney stones—the old fashioned way.

But I also woke up a victor.

I’d not given up, I’d embraced the Fate presented to me, I’d pulled muscles that I must assume were on loan from someone else because they were no muscles I’d ever been aware of before last night. I couldn’t move with ease, and I couldn’t move quickly. Every step I took, I remembered each agonizing moment of the longest hour known to Man, and I recalled with bitterness the current craze that is Zumba.

And I hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated, hated, hated it.

I hate it so much that I’ve decided I’m never going back…until Wednesday…at 6:00 PM.

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I’m not going to tell what all my reasons for doing this were, but it doesn’t seem to matter because I’m losing weight, and discovering that the nice, firmer shape I had  way back during my halcyon tennis days hasn’t actually moved off to Wisconsin.

It’s just been hibernating under a large, more-than-adequate supply of cheese, soft drinks, and vending machine goodies.

Because let’s face it – that’s all a vending machine has.

The one on campus, in Scooba, even has Necco wafers…two kinds.

But, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to get back into the gym. A third of the way into my thirties and I’m already struggling with the potential onset of diabetes and high blood pressure.

What choice did I have?

I changed my diet, lessened my intake of alcohol, and have subsequently saved a lot of money in doing so. Why did no one tell me this could happen?!

Still, one thing has remained constant: I still hate going to the gym. The actual physical part of getting there, you know.

I drag myself there with pure-D dread, but it never fails—despite the myriad of excuses I tell myself, I walk away with a plethora (a plethora I tell you!) of energy. I sleep better, I feel better, and I think I am (to date) hating one-eighth fewer people on my Because You’re You, I Wouldn’t Help You Know Matter What List.

I haven’t taken their names off the list, mind you, but I have asterisked them.

I know I’ve only been going for two weeks, but I’ve been reminded of just how much of my life I actually have control of. A lot!

This kind of thing can't happen over night.

When I get out of the shower and look at my body, which, by the way, is no easy thing to do, I find I have a surge of positivity. (Even though I discovered stretch marks last week. Where on earth did I even get those?)

I guess I ought to put cocoa butter on the grocery list.

There are, on the flip side, a lot of things to like about the gym. For instance, you can watch TV while you trek a mile or two on the treadmill. There’s also a fancy treadmill that goes by the name of Woodway, hidden over in the corner by the stand-up tanning bed. I don’t know what happened to it or on it, but there’s a small sign glued to the wall above it that states clearly that “No one, under any circumstances, is allowed to spend more than 35 minutes on the Woodway.”

That sign scares me because I know too well the lure of obsession. The last time I had such a close relationship with a gym was during my early college years when I was anorexic. I’m still not entirely sure how I got to that point, exactly. My best guess is that when something feels good we tend to wipe away common sense and solid boundaries.

Looking, as I was yesterday, in the mirror, though, I admit there’s no danger that I’ll find any toe of mine on that thin line of anorexia, this go-round.

I will add to that admission, however, that plopping a TV in front of the treadmill (and the Stairmaster, and the, let’s call it, the Cyclotron) is clever and dangerous in and of itself.

I’ve forgotten, twice now, that I was on the treadmill while I was watching TV and tripped.

I also get so involved in what I’m watching that I often walk for nearly an hour before I realize that my legs gave out probably a good twenty minutes earlier. I’m not sure how to address that issue with the owners, so I’m considering taking a sofa cushion with me from here on out, to place behind me should my legs eventually give out, completely.

There are also, and this is both good and bad, very beautiful people at the gym. You’d think they’d finally get to the top of their personal pedestals and stop coming, but a) I’m not really that stupid to believe this, and b) besides, they don’t, which I must say, makes it harder for the likes of me to endure the staring.

You are not the boss of me.

I stare right back, though. (For one thing, I want to look like them in some respects. And for another thing, well, I think you know why I stare. I was almost “that guy” who joined the Y for all the wrong reasons. It’s a temptation that has followed me here, as well).

They’re probably staring at my attire. I don’t own what you’d call “workout clothes.” Though I did catch that episode of the Golden Girls where they joined a gym and so I know what’s “in.” I just haven’t had the chance to find a store that still sells silver-sequined jodhpurs and double-velcro, hi-top Reeboks, in any color or style.

Another positive result is that I find myself less irritable, overall…to the point that even today, in the midst of what we in Mississippi call a blizzard (i.e., it rained a little and it was cold enough for some of it to stick to the shrubs in front of the funeral home; therefore, all schools and most businesses have been closed for today and possibly tomorrow), even today in this wild, winter weather, I went to the gym. I stretched (and as the entire place is under 24-hour surveillance, I’m sure I gave a tickle or two to the people in the back office, with the door closed. What else could that have been laughing about?), I did my treadmill, I pretended to know what that machine by the first bathroom did and probably violated it, and I looked very fierce climbing on to that chin lift tower and well, that’s all I really could do to it…so, then I got off it and went to the water fountain.

All in all, I think I’ve begun to earn some respect in my gym. People notice me. Why yesterday, a young man even asked me if I needed help. I count that a victory.

Of course, I was sitting on the machine backwards, but still…

People give me a wide berth of privacy and space, for the most part.

And I’m loving it.

Yoga = You Owe God Alot. (But, this is no way to thank Him for it).

I just go on from contraption to contraption, as if I owned the entire gym. When I do my version of Sun Salutations, or whatever the Mystics call it, I don’t just take one yoga mat, I take two…because I can. I am not afraid of sitting on that gigantic red ball and bouncing all over the room, if I have to, to work up a sweat, and last night, I stayed on that Woodway for 36 minutes, on a dare. (I dared myself).

The point is: I’m coming back, America. Even if it’s one wrong Stairmaster step at a time.

I am fully, if clumsily, perhaps, on my way.

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