Personal Growth

It doesn't help that when I cook, I cook for a small army. I had my mom and stepfather over recently and made a five-course meal: cheese & crackers with dried fruit, shrimp cocktail, baked potato-cheese soup, lobster tail and NY strip steak with twice-baked potatoes that were each the size of a baby's head. We were so stuffed we couldn't even get to the blackberry cobbler and Haagen-Dasz. Well, they couldn't. It wasn't really my fault that I couldn't stop myself. I am rendered powerless by anything in a fruit glaze.

I used to be a dazzlingly handsome lad with an untamed sense of adventure and the physique of a Q-Tip. I never thought I'd get this big. It's been like one long cheese-filled nightmare. I'll never forget the awakening, either:

It was two days after that Sunday dinner that I discovered dimples in my legs. I was horrified. It was such an undeserved discovery. I was finishing off the last of the Marie Callendar's blackberry cobbler and Haagen-Dasz vanilla ice cream, laying on the couch, watching a DVD rental of my 5th favorite t.v. show, when I looked down at my left leg -- bent and pinned under my right one -- to wipe up a little ice cream that had dribbled off the side of my tray.

There they were: two indentations on the inside of my leg! It looked like a scar from a bad dog bite or something. I couldn't figure out for sure what these were, so I asked Jane. She told me its something fat people have.
"Oh my God," I shouted, "You're kidding. Tell me you're kidding!"
She rolled her eyes, amused at my panic, "Don't worry about it. Those aren't nearly as bad as the ones all over your ass."

I ran to the mirror, dropped my drawers and turned to see my profile. She was right. It looked as though I had suffered a series of shark attacks on my hindquarters. I orbited another quarter turn to try and get the full-on view. I had to put a second mirror next to the first. I took off my shirt and witnessed the full reality of my metamorphosis into the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I was so unnerved that I immediately developed hiccups, which fortunately kept me from polishing off Jane's portion of dessert. I went back to the living room with a glass of water to soothe the indigestion and continued hiccupping between small sobs. I jiggled and Jane began to giggle.
"What the hell are you--HICCUP!--laughing at?" I demanded.
"I'm sorry honey, it's just that when you do that--"
"HICCUP!"
"Hee-hee... when you do that it looks like someone adjusting the venetian blinds-- hee-hee-hee-heeee..."