It's like Tuesdays with Morrie without all the wisdom
Posts tagged growing up
Fat Talk is for Babies
25January 5, 2011
Because it’s the New Year and everybody is resolving to do All of the Good Things and None of the Bad Things, I wanted to share something with you. Here it is: It’s ok to be a woman and have a good body image.
Before Thanksgiving, this post from Psych Central showed up in my Google Reader: How to Have a Fat-Talk Free Holiday Season and I immediately subscribed to that blog because, of all of the things in the world that I hate, I hate fat talk the most. I hate that I’ve done it when the conversation has been steered that way. I hate that when I started running I would feel guilty about it around women who don’t run, and then I’d say I only run because I really like to eat when, really, I run because I like the way it feels. I really like to eat, too, but that’s not why I run. I like to eat real food. Real butter, real cream, real sugar, and I eat what I like to eat without guilt. I don’t care what size my body parts are. I don’t weigh myself. I move how I want, I eat what I want, and I buy bigger pants when I need to. And I just don’t give a care.
It wasn’t always this way. When you’re a girl, you grow up with this culture of fat talk. How much do you weigh? What size are your pants? And it seems like that’s the most important thing. You’re supposed to look in the mirror and point out all the (unchangeable) ways your body sucks. My mom dieted a lot. She looked in the mirror and sighed, but she never turned a critical eye on my body. She never gave me “helpful” advice about weight loss and she never said, “If you eat that, you’ll get fat,” and, because of that, I think it was easier for my sister and me to grow out of that self-loathing that was just a product of our culture and not really who we were. I don’t like that culture. And, yes, I said “grow out of that” because I think it really is a maturity issue. There is nothing more immature than focusing on the outside when the inside is where the truth of Everything is. The inside is where the worthwhile work is and we can’t work on that when we’re distracted by the outside bits.
The other day, Lena (11) asked me how much she weighed and I threw a little bit of a hissy fit, telling her that she weighs as much as she’s supposed to weigh, and that weight is just a number and the same number on one person will look different on another person, and it’s also just a way for women to compete with each other. Women (and girls) step on the scale in the morning and use that number to make or break their day when it doesn’t mean anything. Every body is different. She was like, “Uh…A simple ‘I don’t know’ would do, crazy lady.’” Ahem.
I can remember being just about Lena’s age when I realized that I weighed more than my friends. It had never occurred to me before, but everybody was talking about it and it was…what was it? I was going to type “devastating,” but it wasn’t that. It was…odd. It was kind of like, “Oh, ok. I’m heavier. I guess that sucks?” And then I played that role with the sighing and the, “Ohmigod, my legs are huge!” But I was grateful for my powerful legs that helped me be super awesome at sporty things and stuff. I was supposed to think I was gross, but I was glad to be strong. Again, I think I was able to focus on strength because that was important at home. Nobody at home was telling me I was fat or warning me I was going to get fat someday or restricting my food intake, not even in a passive-aggressive-eyebrows-raised kind of way. Thanks, Mom.
Way back when my sister had her first daughter in 1993, she and I made a commitment to never let that little girl hear us talking bad about our bodies. No looking in the mirror with disgust, no “If I eat that, I’ll get fat,” nothing. That commitment lead to the eventual realization that I just don’t care how big or small my parts are, but I feel like I have to fulfill this womanly duty of talking as if I do when I’m around women who do that. So I don’t do that anymore. Fat talk is for babies. I love fat babies and I’ll talk all day about yummy fat baby rolls, but if you say, “Ugh, if I eat that, I’m going to have to work it off,” I will roll my eyes and walk away. I might have a good body image, but I’m still pretty bitchy.
So, if you’re a lady type*, who grew up with the lady culture of fat talk and you feel like you’re gross, I’m going to promise you that you’re not gross and you don’t have to talk like you are just to make other ladies more comfortable. And you deserve to eat good food. So let’s all go read Eleven Body Image Practices to Pitch in 2011 and throw away those negative body image things we do. Because our daughters are watching us. And if you’re struggling with feeding your children, go ahead and check out Family Feeding Dynamics while you’re at it. Go ahead. You’ll thank me for it.
*Maybe you’re a guy type, but you still struggle with body image. I don’t know what it’s like growing up with so much testosterone that I could punch a wall, but I know that everybody could benefit from loving themselves just a little bit more.
He Was my First
4June 26, 2009
My hairstyle might say Leather Tuscadero, but everything else says Michael Jackson, all the way.
My first concert. My first bedroom poster. My first celebrity letter-writing experience. My first fan club. My first cassette bought with my own money. My first reason to stay up late to watch Friday Night Videos. My first reason to carry a portable tape player around with me. My first reason to dance in front of the mirror. My first love.
The first thing I ever won was tickets to the Jackson Victory Tour. Packy’s Pizza in Chesaning had a drawing and very late one night while my sister and I were babysitting, we got the phone call. I don’t know who called, but my sister answered the phone and had to wake me up to tell me. I was too tired to be excited, but I think I shit myself when it finally sunk in. I went to the Silverdome with my dad and I didn’t even mind that it was all the Jacksons. It was the shit, man. I still have this picture disc and it’s never been played:
The first time I scraped together my very own money with the intention of buying something specific besides candy, I bought Off the Wall on cassette. I already had Thriller and Victory and I was at the point where I needed MORE! I had the glove, I had all of the pins, I had a concert t-shirt, I had his new music, I fiercely coveted the red leather “Beat It” jacket and tried it on every time I went to the mall. There was nothing else to buy, so I bought Off the Wall. And I carried my first portable tape player around and played it outside until I knew all the words. And then I put Thriller back in and danced on a picnic table in front of a window until my neighbor saw me and I got embarrassed.
I remember fighting with my cousin over the words to “Beat It!” She said it said “funny,” when clearly it said “funky.”
I remember watching the news and learning about an old celebrity who had died. I don’t remember who it was, but my parents were both kind of like, “NO! I can’t believe he’s dead!” I very clearly remember that seeing my parents react like that made me realize that Michael Jackson would die some day and it would be on the news and I would be an adult and I would be so sad.
I loved him in the maniacal way that 8-year-old girls love celebrities and I don’t think even my love for Eddie Vedder compares to how I felt about Michael Jackson. Nobody compared to him back then. Even my brother, with his heavy metal leanings, learned how to do the Moonwalk and then taught me and my sister. And today I’m teaching it to my kids.
You Might Have Been Confused by my Perm
14June 11, 2009
I had a good perm and stuff,which, believe me, can cover a lot of faults so I understand why there was some confusion by my commenters on yesterday’s post as well as on Facebook. I stand behind my statement that my family and I were a little trashy. It’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with being a little bit trashy and I don’t mean it in a mean way at all. We didn’t have a cess pool in our backyard, but let me count the other ways in which we were trashy so you can all agree with me:
1. We didn’t have a phone even though my dad worked at the phone company.
My brother ran the phone bill up talking to his girlfriend. His Ecuadorian girlfriend. She had been an exchange student and when she moved back to Ecuador, my brother called her a million times until we owed $500 or something like that. That’s $500 in 1987 money. This was pretty much right exactly when my dad moved out. Some people might say it was my brother’s fault my dad moved out, but I won’t go that far. Anyway, we owed my father’s employer $500 and we couldn’t pay it. And, in fact, never paid it. That’s a little embarrassing. And trashy.
Some time after we moved to the apartment, my mom decided to just see what would happen if she tried to get a phone in her name. I think she thought that because she and my dad weren’t divorced, the phone company wouldn’t allow it, but they did! Anyway, she didn’t tell me her plan, but there was a phone attached to the wall in the apartment and one day, it started ringing! I’m not kidding when I tell you I just about shit myself with joy. I was 15 by then, and had been using payphones for at least 3 years.
2. I thought the Rathskellar was a restaurant, not a bar. It happens.
After my parents separated, my mom spent a lot of time at the Rathskellar, where I would occasionally meet her for food and drunken conversation. Her sister was a waitress there and sometimes we would get free drinks and snacks. This was before the days of the computers in restaurants. God bless the “human error” aspect of keeping a bar tab. Anyway, I always thought of the Rathskellar as a restaurant and it wasn’t until I was much older that Bryan heard me refer to it as a restaurant and he said, “That was a bar, not a restaurant. Just because you could get nachos there, doesn’t make it a restaurant.” I said, “Well, we always ate there when we were kids.” And he said, “Were there ever any other kids eating there after 5 pm? No? That’s because it was a bar.” Know-it-all. I still think this point is debatable, but because most parents wouldn’t have taken their kids to the Rathskellar, I will cop to the fact that the fact that it was my favorite restaurant as a kid might add to the trashiness.
3. At a certain point, none of my friends were allowed to spend time at my house anymore.
My friends’ parents always said, “No, you can’t go Abby’s house, but she can come over here.” There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I think the very last time I had a friend over was when Jenny V. came over and her parents came to pick her up earlier than expected. We lived in a 2-story house in town (walking distance to the Rathskellar of course). When my dad moved away, we rented the upstairs out. At this point, one of my brother’s friends was living there and he happened to be having a party. Mr. and Mrs. V. came to pick Jenny up and accidentally went to the door that lead to the upstairs instead of where my mom, sister, and I actually lived. (Had they gone to the correct door, they would have seen a note, written on a paper plate and shut into the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” which, in their very stable minds, maybe wouldn’t have been any better than what they found when they went to the upstairs apartment). So they went upstairs to look for 12 or 13-year-old Jenny and there were all of these teenagers and maybe some young 20-somethings drinking and smoking and probably getting high. Mrs. V might have flipped out a little bit and I’m pretty sure my sister accidentally called her a bitch for harshing her mellow or something like that. My sister feels bad about it, but she said, “I might have been a little tipsy,” which totally makes sense. After that, Jenny couldn’t come over anymore.
3a. We used to write notes to each other on paper plates and shut the paper plate in the door. That’s low on the trashiness spectrum, but still. At any given moment, you could find a paper plate note shut in the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” or “Chicken patties in the freezer!” or “Do the dishes!” or “Stop taking my wine coolers!”
3b. Our upstairs tenant grew pot in my baby cradle.
It wasn’t the cradle that I used as a baby, it was a cradle that my parents made together when they had a folk-art business in the 80s. It was wooden and it had my name stenciled on it. And it was a perfect spot to grow weed. Apparently.
4. One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood (that’s not the trashy part). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers (it gets better). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers when I was 12.
*cough* Moving on.
5. I liked Debbie Gibson. (Maybe that doesn’t prove anything, but it’s still embarrassing).
6. I used to drive our Chevette to school when I was 14 or 15.
By then, we lived in that apartment up above the stores and my mom worked at one of those stores, so she never needed the car during the day. I made a bunch of copies of the keys to the Chevette so every time I got caught and my mom told me to “Hand over the keys! All of them!” I could safely hand her 3 copies without running out. Trashy, but clever. Maybe the most clever thing ever!
7. Our family car was a Chevette.
You guys, I could go on and on, I swear. You have no choice but to agree with me. I had a good perm that may have covered up the smell, but I was a bit trashy.
My Entire Childhood (Except for Dave’s Bar) Has Disappeared
13June 10, 2009
I stole this picture from flickr user oldbrushes. I asked permission, but I haven’t heard back. If she wants me to take it down, I will, so enjoy it while you can.
When I was just a wee little girl, waiting for the school bus in the wee hours of the crispy fall mornings, far off in the distance I could hear the sound of Farmer Peet’s wee little pigs squealing at the slaughterhouse. At least, that’s what my brother and sister told me I was listening to. It was definitely the sound of pigs squealing, but I don’t know if they were actually being slaughtered at that moment in time.
On a related note, pork is my favorite meat.
The pigs were at the Peet Packing Company, which is no longer around thanks, in part, to Denny McLain and his thieving, but I very rarely eat pork without remembering that sound. It’s oddly soothing, like jingle bells at Christmas. If you lived in Chesaning and had a job that wasn’t on the family farm or in one of the family-owned shops and restaurants back then, it’s very likely that you worked for Farmer Peet’s. Or GM. Or maybe you were a teacher, I don’t know. My dad worked at the local phone company and my mom worked at one of the family-owned shops. Bryan’s dad worked at GM and his mom worked at the same shop that my mom did, but lots of my friends’ parents worked at Peet’s. Anyway, it was a huge bummer when they closed.
Chesaning was lovely when I was young, and sometimes I think I would kill a person in order to have a blueberry muffin from the Heritage House. Why were they so yummy, you guys? Because I was white trash, I never ate them at the Heritage House. I ate them at the Heritage House’s basement bar, The Rathskellar, or at the Carriage Shoppe, which was an antique shop behind the Heritage House.
From the time I was 12-15, we didn’t have a phone, which put my popularity at risk, so instead of reading books and embracing my solitude, I walked to the nearest payphone to be in the loop with my friends. That phone was at a “mini mall” called Market Street Square, which was next to the Heritage House/Rathskellar/Carriage Shoppe lot. On the way to the phone, I would stop at the Carriage Shoppe and buy one of those magic muffins for 50 cents! I would have paid a whole dollar. Besides the great payphone, Market Street Square had a bunch of cute shops and a yummy deli, none of which are there anymore. Well, it looks like Market Street Square is still there, but now it’s a church and Christian bookstore, with plans for a deli and resale shop to be added later. But it’s not the mini mall from my childhood. And I think my sister told me that the local phone company took the payphone out of there.
The pigs, payphone, and muffins from my childhood might be gone, but the dominant sounds from my teenhood aren’t. By the time I was a teenager, my parents were divorced and my mom and I lived in an apartment up above a row of shops and bars in downtown Chesaning. Sometimes on summer nights, we would wake up to the sound of drunk people leaving Dave’s Bar and Farmer’s Inn after last call. Drunk people are funny. One time we saw one get hit by a car. He wasn’t hurt, so it was extra funny. He just kind of bounced off the car and then yelled at it as it drove away. We saw a couple of fist fights, but mostly we just eavesdropped on drunken, “I love you soooooo much!” conversations. Farmer’s Inn isn’t there anymore, but Dave’s still is. Dave’s will never die. Never!
During the daytime, there were (usually) no drunks for entertainment, so I had to pass the time by watching the security camera feed from one of the shops underneath our apartment. Do I have to tell you that this shop is no longer there? I didn’t think so. The shop had a camera in the make-up aisle and our tv would pick up the feed. I didn’t have cable so my friends and I would naturally watch the security camera channel sometimes. Or a lot. One lucky, lucky day I saw a girl who was a year ahead of me in school browsing the Bonne Bell display. I was just about to turn it off when I saw her turn her head to the left and right to make sure no one was watching her. That piqued my interest. I thought I was totally going to see her steal a Dr. Pepper-flavored Lip Smacker or something, but she surprised me by picking her nose and then her butt in quick succession. It. Was. Awesome. Way better than cable. 
Unfortunately, I still didn’t have a phone by then so I had to run to the nearest payphone to call all of my friends and tell them. If that happened today, I totally would have tweeted it. Well, I probably would have missed it because I would have been watching actual tv shows instead of security cameras. Even white trash kids get to have cable and high-speed internet these days. Not like when I was young and only the rich kids had it.
Maybe all of the landmarks from my childhood are gone, but I still have my memories. And Dave’s bar. When one or both of those go under, then it will be like I was never even born.
I’m Not Painting Over the Graffiti
5April 28, 2009
It’s the little touches that make a house a home and I say the graffiti stays. After all, does your house have graffiti? No? How sad for you. I also think the weight bench is a nice touch and is in keeping with the style of the unfinished part of the basement.
I added some more pictures, if anyone is still interested in the snoozy story of our house. I’m still painting stuff. I don’t have pics of the girls’ rooms all put together and lovely yet because I haven’t done the dots and peace symbols yet. Soon!
Two of my cousins and my sister-in-law (the one who is always a bad influence on me at Easter) are coming to stay with us this weekend because we’re all running the Capital City Half Marathon together. I’m excited about that. My sister-in-law’s name is Tracy and my sister’s name is TracEy. Is that confusing to you? My kids call my sister “Aunt Tracey” and they call my sister-in-law “Different Aunt Tracey.” They don’t know how right they are. TracEy was going to come down for the race, too, but she is cursed with an ultra-talented daughter who is the lead in her high school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, which happens to open this weekend. My niece is kind of a big deal. I’m going to buy a copy of the dvd and everybody who visits me over the summer will have to watch it over and over.
One more thing, after I posted that picture of the Pacer with the chick standing next to it, somebody said something about all women in the 70s looking like that, so I want to give you a clearer picture of my mother during the late 70s/early 80s. This is exactly what she looked like, down to the roller skates:
She looked so much like Linda Ronstadt that I would stare at that album cover wondering how in the world they decided to put my mother on the cover. Was there a contest? Did they just see her at the roller rink and snap a picture? And why didn’t they just put this Linda Ronstadt person on the cover? I thought maybe it was because she was ugly and they didn’t want her on the cover. But then I thought about the albums in my dad’s collection with Garfunkel on the cover, and I decided ugliness must not be an issue. It was so perplexing, but I never asked anyone about it and it was years before I realized that my mom was not a famous album cover model. I’m quick like that.
