Create Reality... Or It Will Be Created For You

Today's post is an object lesson in how malleable reality is. First, some context: in middle school gym class, I was known as "Butterball." This nickname was shouted by groups of classmates, mostly boys, as I ran laps, played kickball, or approached other people for any reason. It was meant as a comment on my chubbiness, and the chubbiness was due, I long assumed, to the fact that I reached my adult weight (110 lbs) before reaching my adult height.

Then this past Christmas, at my mom's house, I started organizing her photo albums for her. They have never been in any kind of order in my lifetime: photos lived in shoeboxes, in plastic bags, in piles stuffed between the unused pages of photo albums that we had bought with the intention, never realized, of organizing the family photo collection. But finally, at Christmas, I put the 1960s, 70s and 80s each in their own album in basically chronological order.

Can you tell what's coming next? Yes: there are hundreds of photos of me between the ages of 9 and 15, because my brother and I got crappy (i.e. suitable for rambunctious kids) little cameras for Christmas 1979, and we got a Polaroid when I was 12. I am depicted in Flashdance clothes, horrifying preppy outfits, and a comprehensive range of bad haircuts (poodle perm, anyone? Blue hair? Actually, the blue hair was kind of cool). But there is not a single photo in which I look chubby. In other words, I was not chubby in middle school. It's no surprise that people called me Butterball for no reason, since many kids that age are just evil. (I know they're only evil because they're insecure, but the fact remains that they're evil). The surprise is that for more than twenty years I believed them, despite having had mirrors and photos to tell me otherwise. This belief was like a post-hypnotic suggestion induced by peer pressure.

I now invite all my readers (maybe "both" is a better word... I doubt this blog is heavily trafficked) to discard whatever beliefs you may have that are your personal equivalent of thinking you were chubby in middle school. Those beliefs might be just plain wrong. As Tom Robbins says, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."