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Is how much I weighed when I was born.
The next time I weighed myself I remember being 45 lbs. It was nursery school or something.
Remember passing the 100 lb point? Then I said to myself (or my grandmother said to me): Don't go past 110. That knowledge seared into my head, I zoomed past the 110 marker to 125 with the discovery of pie at the school cafeteria.
That held for a bit until my hips decided to expand to embrace the entire world, leaving a system of red puffy river beds that no doctor could convince me would fade to white in time.
Ah, the years of the fire hydrant, when my hips and breasts exploded in such closed proximity to each other, it was hard to tell where one curve ended and the other began. Put a baggy sweater on over that and voila: the silouhette of a fire hydrant.
I needed carbs and I needed them bad: Chocolate, pizza, bagels with butter, fresh baked cookies and cinnamon buns. Warm bags of buttery popcorn in the movie theatres. Nachos at Sneaky Dees. Plates of fries at pubs. I was force-feeding my crazy hormones hoping they would get lethargic and stop making me feel so wiggy.
I went to weight watchers with a friend a year above me in high school who was also plagued by unruly curves. We lost 5 lbs before we realised that 1/2 cup of cottage cheese would never appease our huge adolescent hungers. We got so cranky and famished, we nearly stopped being friends.
A year of cheese and chocolate in Europe and I hit 158. I never grew past 5'4. I came back dressed in "slimming" black and my sister Jackie grinned at the arrivals gate and grabbed my Sophia Loren vavavoom love handles with a look of comical appreciation.
But things evened out. My waist stretched out and I learned to cook. I banished the daily chocolate bar and stopped obsessing quite so much. 135. Heartbreak disease or fits of athletic activity brings me down ten, but I usually hover around those 10 lbs. And I build awesome muscles with little effort. I still think a lot about weight and in shy moments, I long to reign in my unruly curves. But it is not so bad.
Lately I am wondering: Why do people think I want to know how much their baby weighs? Why do we advertise that information? A slippery slope, I tell you.
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5.13.2003
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