the fat kid

(originally posted 6/21/2021)

In high school he was the fat kid. Big. Thick. Dopey-looking.  I wasn’t the Prom King or Quarterback or anything, but I played sports and ran with the popular crowd and was pretty good with the ladies if I say so myself.

He was not.

He was fat and had greasy hair and nobody really liked him. He would wear t-shirts from angry bands that nobody had heard of. In gym he’d get sweaty trying to do a single pull up and then be the only boy who wouldn’t shower after class.

I used to think about when his mom went to the mall to buy him socks, about how the socks had no idea what they were in for. As they were being pulled over his foot all must have seemed fine but when they reached his ankle and calf it must have been every man for himself. Socks seem so rectangular in nature while his foot-to-knee shape was all triangle.

Those poor fucking socks. If socks could scream…

After high school I went off to college and he went off to wherever fat kids who aren’t off to college go. The first couple summers I’d see him when I was home and he looked as fat and disheveled as ever.

The summer before my junior year I saw him trying to jog. I almost drove off the road I was laughing so hard. Who the fuck jogs wearing long sweat pants? I could only imagine the jiggling that was going on beneath them as he lumbered along. I actually wondered who was going to pay to repair the sidewalk when he was done. I remember feeling angry in an odd sort of way about his jogging. Why couldn’t he just accept the fact that was the fat kid and would inevitably grow into the fat man?

That summer I would see him jogging almost every day and then the summer before my senior year I’d see him and he wasn’t quite as fat and he’d switched to shorts. I wouldn’t say he was jogging like normal non-fat people do, but it was much less a waddle than it had been. When it was hot out you could see the sweat stains under his arms and on the back of his shirt from half a mile away. It was disgusting. He would be out there every damn day and I’d be like “Give it a fucking rest fat boy” but he didn’t.

When I graduated I moved back home and got an entry-level position at a local company. I wore a suit and tie and worked from nine to five and things looked promising. I even found a route to and from my office that avoided the path where the fat kid was still jogging. Now he never missed a day. Through rain, sleet and snow. He was like a mailman back when they gave a shit. I couldn’t take seeing him. I wanted to run him down. The fucking guy was now jogging without a shirt and had cut his hair. Who the fuck did he think he was? Showing off just because he no longer had man-boobs. If someone didn’t know he was the fat kid there was no longer any way of telling. The asshole looked ok now. I’d even heard that he was dating a local girl who wasn’t a complete pig.

Who was going to marry the fat girl in town and have fat kids if not him? He was fucking up the entire pecking order.

EPILOGUE – This fat fuck loser ended up starting a company that manufactures socks for fat fuck losers. He rode the wave of stupid products geared towards fat people and ended up moving out of town and into a huge house. His wife is beautiful and now nobody he interacts with knows that he’s a fat loser. I even saw him on the cover of a health magazine. Smiling away.

How the fuck is that fair?

Just because I put on a few pounds I’m expected to be the one dating chubby chicks now?

Fuck.