Know Your Roll

If you are like me, you have been overweight for longer than you can remember. Personally, I have never been anywhere near skinny. Rumor has it I was born weighing 47 pounds, and my mother washed down several bottles of painkillers with two bottles of tequila when she went into labor due to the intense pain.

I was born on May 8th, 1973, which was just about the time that doctors where beginning to say Ya know what? Giving the mother so many drugs while she’s giving birth just might have some detrimental effects on the child. “Luckily for me, the doctor who delivered me thought that this theory about drugs being harmful was hogwash and that it should be categorized along with other such nonsensical medical theories as herbalism, acupuncture, and penicillin. He was the type of doctor who suggested to his patients that they smoke cigarettes to ease the stress of pregnancy. You know a good, old-fashioned doctor.

So there was my mom hopped up on booze, pain killers, and whatever other medicinal stuff the doctor could find lying around the delivery room, trying to bring this HUGE baby in to the world while basically stoned out of her mind. If you’re having trouble picturing this, imagine Janis Joplin at Woodstock trying to push a watermelon through a pineapple Lifesaver that she’s holding between her knees. If not for the clear-headed thinking of my father (once again, according to rumor), my mother would have named me Peace-Love-Baby-Strawberry-Fields-Forever-Hendrix Pierce.

Thanks to all the booze and drugs involved in my birth, I have never once had to drink or do drugs in life. Some people have erroneously assumed that I must be seriously messed up, but that’s getting off topic here

The point I’m trying to make here is that I have been overweight since the moment I was born. And up till just recently, I have been just fine with the roles assigned to me by society. I started out as The Fat Kid in grade school, which meant that everyone wanted me on their football team during football season but no one wanted me on their baseball team during baseball season. This all changed, however, when the football players discovered that I was a pansy who wouldn’t block anyone and the baseball players found out that I would hit the ball out of the park just to avoid having to RUN the bases.

In the end, I decided to go for the Geeky Fat Kid role, which is a subsection of the Fat Kid culture. As a “Geeky Fat Kid,” not only did I get to be the last one picked for teams during any recess sporting events, but I was also allowed to read comic books, watch science fiction fanatically, and gear myself towards my next roll in life, the Weirdo Fat Kid.

High school is not kind to the “Weirdo Fat Kid.” You somehow belong to every group in the school and yet none of them, all at once. All the jocks think you’re a stoner, all the stoners think you’re a drama kid, and all the drama kids think you’re a nerd. The nerds are just happy that someone from one of the other more popular groups is associating with them without wanting to copy their homework or give them a wedgie.

As the Weird Fat Kid, you are allowed to join in with any of these groups as a guest, but never as an actual member. Over and over, I would hear lines like Brian? Yeah, He’s cool for a jock. This was okay, I guess, but I never really belonged anywhere. It wasn’t until after high school that I found my favorite roll of all, The Big Galoot.

I was perfectly content being The Big Galoot. Everyone is your friend when you’re the Big Galoot! I don’t know why, but Big Galoot status is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to women. On the blessing side, women trust a Big Galoot like they trust no one else. They talk about the things that they won’t talk about with their boyfriends or anyone else, and on several occasions I found myself sitting in different women’s bedrooms getting to watch them try on several different outfits getting ready for a big date. They’ll parade around in front of a Big Galoot as if we were eunuchs, unashamedly flaunting parts of their bodies that they ought to not be flaunting. Ahh, yes I did so enjoy that part of the Big Galoot role but the curse of the situation is when you try to ask one of these young beauties out on a date.

You know that old saying, What’s the worst thing that can happen if you ask her out on a date? She could say “No. Well, no the WORST thing that could happen is that she’ll say BWAA HA HA HA HAA!!! With YOU?!?!? He he he heee! Oh, please that’s good, Brian You had me really going there for a minute! Nancy NANCY! Come here! Oh, Nancy, you’re not going to BELIEVE what Brian just said say it again, Brian Ha HAAAA!!! Oh my GOSH! Isn’t that just a SCREAM???

After maybe 15 or 20 such humiliating rejections, I decided to give up my Big Galoot role in life and set about searching for a better role, a role that would include the possibility of female companionship. I wandered far and wide looking for my new role, and finally found it in the pages of Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution I would be a LOW CARBER!

I’ve been a Low Carber for almost an entire year now (my first anniversary is on Valentine’s Day – how appropriate), and I have come to the conclusion that the Low Carbers position on the ladder of societal acceptance is somewhere below Low Fat Dieter but still above Heavens Gate Cult Member.

An interesting note, though, is that up until the recognition of Low Carber as a societal role, there was little or no differentiation between Low Fat Dieter and Heavens Gate Cult Member. It seems that we are even more important to society than anyone had even realized! So next time someone is giving you a hard time about your low carbohydrate eating habits, just look them defiantly in the eye and say, Hey, Buddy, without me, you couldn’t tell your Powters from your Applewhites!***

*** Explanatory Note From Brian: This is what I like to call a Dennis-Millerism. It’s a reference that is somewhat obscure… Applewhite was the name of the guy who led the Heavens Gate Cult, Heaven’s Gate being those computer programmers who all wore the same tennis shoes, castrated themselves, and systematically committed suicide when the Hale-Bopp comet was coming towards the earth a few years back. They believed that the comet was actually our “Extraterrestrial Masters” (the aliens who put us on earth to begin with) coming back to take us home. And they thought the only way to board this comet-shaped spaceship was to shed these mortal coils and transcend earthly needs. Oh, and somewhere along the way, Mr. Applewhite decided that they should all castrate themselves. No one is quite sure how that worked into the whole thing…