Saturday, February 25, 2006

3 brief fat boy memories

My mother was a canasta maven. She played two or three times a week. I was always happy when the floating game was held at our apartment, because that meant there would be plenty of candy. I was a fat little boy, and my gluttony knew no bounds. My mother would leave out dishes of fruit and all sorts of candy. I didn't touch the fruit, but I ate about half the candy. My favorite was the bridge mix--chocolates with five or six different artificial centers. Every time I would go back for more candy, my mother would say, in front of all the canasta ladies, "Enough already! Aren't you fat enough?" It was embarrassing, but not enough to stop me.

* * *

I remember an ad that always used to run in the Sunday Times Magazine. It was an ad for a fat boys' camp, and it featured a photograph of a now svelte boy in a pair of way-oversized pants. The boy held the waist out to show how much weight he'd lost. Sometimes I would stand in front of a mirror and hold my stomach in and try to hold my pants out like the boy in the photo, but it hardly made a difference.

* * *

Every time I hear the word "tit" I think of what Lynn Kurland said to me in 1967. It was summertime, and we were both eleven. It must have been very hot out, as I had my shirt off, and I was normally loath to show off my chubby little body. So there we were, Lynn and I, girl and boy, puberty only a stone's throw away, when Lynn looked at me and said, "Boy, look at those tits! They're bigger than mine." And, indeed, they were.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

A poignant memory.

4:56 PM  
Blogger Peter Cherches said...

Thanks. Now you have to change your name.

5:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I should elaborate. When I was about 11 or 12 in 1960 or so and, like you, a little fat boy, there was a televsion news program about obesity in America. There were health warnings and generalizations about the problems of being large in the late Eisenhower era. But they also dramatized how someone might feel in certain situations. One such scene involved an enormous man--flab lava-flowing down to his equator--trying on clothes in a store. He stood in front of a three way mirror, turning this way and that while a voiceover communicated his thoughts. "You are loathesome," he thought. "People hate you," etc. Of course I identified with his loathesomeness and inwardly cringed. That was over forty years ago and I have long since lost the avoirdupois (cf marble notebooks). But your big tits brought back my own poignant memory. Thanks, I think.

10:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The important question is whether or not Peter is referring to the romance author Lynn Kurland.

3:08 PM  
Blogger Peter Cherches said...

Funny you should ask. When I posted that I did a Google search on the name and discovered that there was a romance writer named Lynn Kurland. However, it appears that she is a bit younger than my childhood friend, and did not grow up in Brooklyn.

3:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Helene Allen (nee Bernstein), now removed to GA, and I had a conversation about this very topic a couple of years ago. I thought the author to be "our" Lynn, but Helene convinced me otherwise.

How you doin', Pete? Great stuff on your site. I just found it today.

BTW, the "anonymous" post was by me - I was temporarily blog-challenged.

4:13 PM  
Blogger Peter Cherches said...

Hi Bill; if you're the Bill I think you are, I had no idea you knew Lynn, and I don't think I know Helene. Nonetheless I hope you, Helene, and both Lynn Kurlands are doing well.

4:43 PM  

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