the walkabout

Because of today's anomalous weather, I decided to leave the house for once and face real people. Yes, I braved the gritty suburban streets and took a mid-afternoon stroll after my lunch of peanut butter toast with a banana.

It was a beautiful day, and on my walk, I found the neighborhood surprisingly busy. Stay-at-home moms were cruising the streets, some youths were around for unexplained reasons, and then there were the retirees. Yes, my neighborhood has always been fairly geriatric, but only today did I realize just how much everyone aged in my four-year-absence at school. It's amazing how much has changed.

I walked up a steep hill I'd never climbed before, just to see where it would lead and I saw an elderly woman checking her mail. I had just reached the end of the sidewalk and turned around when she waved me over.

"Are you new here?" she asked. Oh gosh, she thought I was new here?

"No, no," I said. "I just live down there." I pointed to a place somewhere downhill, just in case she was crazy or something.



"How long have you lived here?" she persisted.

"Well..." How long had I lived here? Just about 20 years. "All my life." This kind of confrontation is exactly what I don't want to face. I don't like making small talk.

"Oh."  And suddenly the dawn of recognition--"You must be [my name]." Yeah, I'm still keeping this relatively anonymous. So that was weird, how did she know my name?

"You remember Jennifer?"

I nodded absently, pretending that I did until...

OH. Well, now I remembered. Jennifer was my childhood friend, like really early childhood. We hung out when I was in kindergarten because we were both Asian. I guess you could say we were best friends, but seriously we were only friends for that one year. Maybe we would acknowledge each other between the ages of 6 and 12, but from middle school on, we never spoke again.

"Yeah, yeah I do." And then she went off about what Jennifer was doing.

"What are you doing now?" she asked. And I told her I was still looking for a job. Then we went on to discuss my parents, my siblings, her situation.

"I almost didn't recognize you," she said. "You look really good. Your body really..." she cut off there and made the universal signal for "slimmed down." The woman hadn't seen me since I was six. Was I really that obese when I was a child? I would argue that I was at least pretty average until middle school when my belly ballooned due to lack of exercise and a terrible, terrible diet of Gushers Fruit Snacks and chicken tenders.

So yes, what I learned today was that I underestimated just how fat I was as a child.