Discrimination at Ten

  It was 1961 and I was ten. At that precise time in my life I was mindful of simply two conditions-I wanted to experiment the stage and I was fat. In what appeared to be the most unconventional approach imaginable I quickly became the star of my own reality show. It materialized like greased lightning. It befell one day, out of the blue, the mighty broadcast, the great proclamation. The Big Announcement! Straight-forward from the mouth of my 5th grade teacher- Mrs. Sullivan. She arose from behind her invincible desk, removed her bi-fogel eyewear from her long pointed nose, summoned her yard stick directly to the scale in the corner of the classroom; and with her irritating raspy deep voice the words roared through the air like a lion’s growl, echoing endlessly through my ears. The whole class; there would be no preclusions to this health assessment, would be measured, height and weight, the very next day. Let me tell you, it wasn’t going to be like a Weight Watcher’s meeting where they carefully calculate your mass in a hush-hush setting…OH NO my friend! This was going to be the real deal; one room, all of the kids, waiting on the Mighty Hercules to take to her stage, front and center, and step upon the giant weighing machine.  This was just the inauguration of moving into my poignant youthful years.

My mother was a wonderful and gracious woman with limited character flaws. She was a Christian lady. At 5’2”, she stood a good foot shorter than my father but was quite rotund in the middle section, had short chubby legs, thinning brown hair and a hearty laugh. She was soft spoken. My dad on the other hand, tipped the meter on the height chart at 6’2’’, maybe even a tad bit taller, had a long lean physique with a very prominent nose, much like the one of my teacher’s. As fate would have it though, I inherited my mother’s plumpness and my father’s loftiness, and to this day I am oblivious of where the giant size feet came from, but I am certain they were at least an adult size eight at birth.  I was the middle one, the neediest I suppose.

My mother time and again described me as the hypochondriac with the most dramatic appeal of the family. I was always spraining an ankle and tripping over my geeky feet. I tell you sometimes I would just fall down for no reason. One of mom’s all-time favorite stories came from when I was in the fourth grade. On my usual dreary never-ending walk home from school I witnessed a two car mishap. There I was right in the middle of the scene, an eye witness. I scrutinized the banging of these old Junkers. I promptly branded the liable soul. As I stood on the corner, knowing full well my testimony would be indispensable to the local police; I waited anxiously upon their arrival. The transgressors knew I clutched the key evidence and I am sure that was their very rational in hollering at me to run along. Delirious with delight and totally out of breath, I made my grand entrance into the hallway. Shrieking to the adult women of the house I declared I was an eye witness to a collision. I knew beyond any reasonable doubt I needed to file a police report and my mother was liable to lend me a hand. Momentarily mom became visible appearing taller than I had ever seen her 5’2’’ frame stand before, starring me up and down firmly. Her steel grey eyes pierced directly into my baby blues, right through my thick spectacles. She instantly trampled my fortitude. The words rolled slowly off her tongue, spilling right pass her deep rosy red lips--lips resembling the likes of Elizabeth Taylor. She proclaimed in a flat you listen here lady, you saw nothing! Looking ahead by a good twenty years.

 I distinctly remember echoing those same exact words. I profess to be a klutz. From my first fall at the tender age of eight I have tumbled on a recurring basis. I have a tendency to stumble over my two big geeky feet at the most inopportune times and the worse settings. This is my blueprint and I established it early in my existence. One day while returning back to the office from break I found myself all alone; laid out in the hallway between two separate departments. To my embarrassment I heard a quiet voice generate from the rear of my grand derriere. My God it was a Santa Clause looking man speaking. Thoughtless as he soon proved himself to be, he never furnished me a hand of assistance, although I would have immediately refused. Instead he leaned down into my shameful face and gently informed me he saw everything. The entire fall. I rose to my feet, brushed off my bruised ego, straightened my clothes, and politely told this fine gentleman, “You saw nothing!” My saving grace during this ghastly nightmare was this impalpable human being was actually quite a bit larger than I. He was a fat man who rendered no assistance to the fat lady.

My brother was three years older than I and he truly inherited my dad’s long and lean build. We were never very close and I feel certain he was embarrassed by my plus size dimensions.  He and every single one of his buddies had the same lean, lanky, basketball-ish build, each had lettered in the sport and each made fun of me every opportunity. I truly believe the worst part was he actually had friends, something I desperately wanted to experience. I was eight when my sister appeared out of nowhere. To this day I am not even sure where she came from. Pregnancy back in those times was not spoken about openly, especially to children. All I know is I was now the middle child, and from what I have heard the middle one has the most quagmires, feels the most inadequate, and the most unnoticed. Now whether this is a myth or a truth it illustrates my outlook exactly.

Growing up in New Brighton during the fifties and sixties was a unique experience. We lived with my grandparents in a two story home. Back then duplexes were uncommon but technically we had just that. My grandfather had transformed the second level of his place into a completely renovated apartment with three bedrooms and a giant living room that actually sat in the back of the house and overlooked the Beaver River. All this just so my mother didn’t have to experience separation anxiety from her parents when she married my father. And my dad, being the first-rate son-in-law and dutiful husband he was, agreed to this deal. My mom, an only child, had this exceptionally strong tie to my grandmother. An unconditional love co-existed between these two, one that was apparent to me by the amount of time I eyed them together. Daily without hesitation, these two grown women sat vigilantly glued to the tiny black and white screen of our first television set. Promptly at twelve noon, they would be seated worshiping their two fifteen minute soap operas, The Guiding Light and Search For Tomorrow.  I correlate this demonstration of such a strong affection for their shows as the inception of my immense fixation to become the next ‘Star’ from Captain January or Mary Long of The Donna Reed Show.

 I can pledge to you here my daughters, my son-law and my dearest friends are bemused at my undying passion for the theatre. I have contacted MANY entertainment industry executives in hopes of locating just one committed soul out there who would take pity on my plight and provide me with just one small unforgettable walk on role.

  With great fondness I remember that prized mantel that housed my quarter allowance every Sunday morning, a much too generous gift from my grandfather. This money afforded me the opportunity to stock up on the old fashion candy treats from the corner market. Prosperity for only twenty-five cents. There was a multitude of loving and tender moments between granddad and me “cowing” down at the kitchen table--crumbling our plain soda crackers into the buttermilk. Granddaddy and I had scores of times when he would make us deep fried mush and serve it dripping with real melted butter and fresh maple syrup.  Was this the incipience of the love that was cultivated between me and the delicacies of food?

I know my grandparents were made from the exact same mold. The very one that produced my mother. Each was short in height, round in belly size and they had cute matching fabric covered chairs adjacent to one another. The only difference, so I was told, was granddad was quite overtly stubborn and grandma had to keep him tamed and orderly. Granddad had been seriously crippled in a manufacturing accident when he was twenty-four years old. His right arm had been mutilated in a giant factory machine and was amputated just above the elbow. This never slowed him down and he continued to drive until eighty years of age, utilizing a special hand knob on the steering wheel in order to safely make his right and left hand turns. He finally decided to surrender his license in order to protect the roadways when his eyesight began to fail. Until the day he passed he swore my grandmother, whom he was married to for forty-five blissful years, was addicted to coca cola and she surrendered her life to her soda dependence. Now I think as senility set in granddad became confused with his decades thinking it was the early 1900’s instead of the 1990’s. Nevertheless, he and I had a unique and special connection, a tight bond that existed until his death at the age of ninety-five; mostly surrounding food.

According to the New Brighton Borough website the community has often been referred to as the “Rush Belt” and the ‘American Home Town.” A litany of steel mills surrounded the small towns of the Beaver Valley area. The front of our two-story home faced Third Avenue, directly across from a prominent Catholic church. The panoramic view from our living room’s large plate glass window faced westward and reflected a mighty field resting just beneath the long stretch of railroad tracks that followed the muddy and murky waters of the Beaver River. The Borough of New Brighton nestled in Beaver County, is situated between Beaver Falls, the birthplace to Joe Namath, lovingly known as Broadway Joe, and twenty-six miles northwest of Pittsburgh, the nearest place for shopping back in those days.

 In 1958 the New Brighton Junior High School was completed and my first chance meeting with the building came just a year before I actually entered into the seventh grade. It was a Sunday in fact. Our entire family reported to the main entryway along with the other members in our community. We attended this huge gathering to receive the initial oral polio medication. Oddly enough it was a sugary drinkable liquid instead of an inoculation. The long line of people began to assemble outside the double massive doors to the main entryway, then hooked around the administrator’s hallways and proceeded to end at the gymnasium where there was a pasty colored thin nurse clothed in all white including her petite dress, tiny shoes and funny little hat. We arrived mid-afternoon. The folks were being ushered in first come first serve so it didn’t matter our last name began with an “E.” The wait was intense for my parents, as they watched us siblings wrestling with the ability to stand still and remain silent, reflecting the manners they had instilled in us. I saw several families with children that day that I would eventually come to know in middle school,  but not one of the kids in or out of the building stood as tall or as round as I did. And on that particular day I did not pay attention to their feet.

My mom, unique in her own way, didn’t have inkling about color harmonization. Routinely she sent me to school with stripes and squares, plaids and designs and on many occasions the dreaded orange blouse with purple buttons sewn on with the dazzling red thread. Then throw in the thick glass black framed glasses I began wearing before the first grade and the ironclad permanent wave hairdo my mother bestowed upon her little princess, and I became every kid’s personal amusement park ride.

I can’t recall much about the night before the eminent weigh in but I feel confident the anxiety began sometime around 6’ish that evening, shortly after dinner. I can pledge to you I did not miss my meals, unless of course it was goulash. In actuality my mother tricked me once into eating this slosh. After stopping at the corner store for my daily sweet fixation, I managed to maneuver a penny directly from my fingers to my belly. I knew immediately I was going to die. God forbid I ingested the money so foolishly. Scared, I raced home. Mom had an instant fix-goulash-the cure all. God Bless our Mothers.

  Without a bit of uncertainty I am sure I had an unexplained belly ache tagged with nauseousness. Both of these conditions carried right into the morning of the big event. I remember dressing for school upstairs in our one and only tiny bathroom and once finished going down to my grandmother’s kitchen, fetching her mercury thermometer. I then ran the much too hot water over the glass instrument. I regularly simulated an illness using the thermometer trick hoping to gain a sick day from school, in order to avoid the daily mortification of being the “largest” kid in class. This time though, the deception didn’t work. In seconds flat the thermometer broke and the mercury rolled upon the kitchen floor. As I tried to urgently recover and secure my muddle off the ground, it was time to leave. I was out the door dragging my huge feet the entire walk to school, weary from the unthinkable. No longer would the thermometer cater to my trickery.

I literally lived the farthest from Central Elementary of any child in school. I was not sanctioned to take the school bus even though the distance was well over a mile one way.  We were four houses from the outskirts of town, the very end of the road, a vast darkness beyond the last brick home. I wasn’t fortunate to catch a ride either; we only had one car and it was my father’s prized Plymouth Valiant; housing a polished black finish with a shiny red interior. Therefore my giant feet carried me to school each and every day. In the morning, home for lunch, back to class afterwards and home again each afternoon. To this day I am not sure why I didn’t carry my food with me.  May-be mom thought I would devour it while in tow. I know there was a small lunch area housed in the basement of the elementary building, as I saw it each time I used the bathroom. Some of the kids remained at school during lunch. They were privileged to eat in the lower room and have playground time. But not me--I trekked home every day for my prepared peanut butter sandwich and tomato soup lunch, always waiting upon the kitchen table. I ate alone while mom and grandma sat immersed in their shows. Thereupon I would perch myself underneath the archway of the kitchen, unnoticed by my elders. Then it would happen. It was incomprehensible. I became immediately submersed within each of the characters; deeply entrenched inside the plot of the Bauer family. Securing my eyes shut I would conceptualize the hour when I would become the next titanic of the theatre. Abruptly reality would set in. Traditionally I was late heading out to class.

 Although nature took charge of my huge feet, it was a serious wonder I was so hefty as my travels to and from school each day was well over four miles in distance. All I can figure is prior to my birth the good Lord opened the flood gates and selected me to house all the fat genes of every kid in New Brighton.

I arrived to school behind schedule the morning of the unforgettable weigh-in. I always did. I forever blamed the distance and the fact I had to walk it alone each day for my unfailing tardiness. In essence I just lolly gagged along the way. I was accustomed to the route and knew every inch of the ground, every crack in the road, every car on the street, between home and school. You know the old “Step on the crack and break your mother’s back?” My mother was often the recipient of the sidewalk cracks; especially after a rough day in class. Once I made my barely noticeable entry into the room the entire class promptly rose to their feet and began the Pledge of Allegiance; always followed with a spoken prayer. Prayer was allowed in schools in the early sixties. There was no hitch after that. Mrs. Sullivan shifted over to the doctor like scale and once again in that annoying deep throaty voice proceeded to call us in alphabetical order. Oh propitious me, I was an Espy.

One by one each of the children hopped upon the scale, one by one each of the kids were told aloud their weight and one by one each of the kids was well under a hundred pounds. Then it was my turn. This moment will forever live in my consciousness. It was like viewing a giant movie screen with a definitive scene replicating over and again in unhurried movement, recurring nonstop. I certainly didn’t hop on the scale. I didn’t even hop over to the scale. As I dragged my much too large feet to the mighty machine, I slowly managed to step onto the metal square pad, my larger than life shoes barely fitting upon the apparatus and all I commit to memory is the teacher, awed in total shock and amazement, publicizing my one-hundred-ninety pound frame, to the entire 5th grade class. In fact, at that very moment in time, I am certain the building wide declaration went out over the public announcement system and the entire school knew how fat I was.

Furthermore; I feel sure the town cop was summoned directly to my home to spread the scandalous news to both my mother and grandmother that I was “fat!”  Now what type of discriminating society was I honored to live in? However, I was naïve. I was sure the magic number for a child of my age was two-hundred. Good golly I didn’t weigh two-hundred pounds!  I was euphoric and quite oblivious to the entire 5th grade class giggling like hyenas behind my back, poking fun at their own personal punching bag. After all, someone had to be the target in class, the kid who was made fun of, so it might as well be me. As I skipped home that afternoon. I was elated the scale didn’t tip the two hundred mark. Life was good! A clear-cut stop at the corner store for my favorite treat, a yummy chocolate popscicle delight was definitely in order.

It wouldn’t be long before I would once again be reminded of my giant life form. Our community pool was close in proximity and my mother sent me often during the summer months. Someone new emerged one day at the booth to take my money. Of course she was pretty and petite, possessing big brown eyes and certainly did not have any type of permanent wave curls in her hair. She was possibly a member of the family that owned the establishment. As I placed my quarter upon the rim of the desk, I was enlightened immediately my cost would be a dollar, the adult price. As I graciously and quietly explained I was only ten years of age, I was at once counseled that my fee of one dollar would need to be paid or proof of age produced.

Now I wasn’t accustom to carrying any type of identification to prove I was a kid so I had to travel back home on foot, to retrieve my birth certificate, (children were not required to have social security cards in those days). I wondered all the way down the road that day how I became such a hefty size girl with giant feet, one that had to prove their innocence; cowering into my shell and yearning to never return to the pool again. No such luck. Mom sent me as often as she could; armed with my birth certificate, so I could confirm my 5’8’’ one-hundred-ninety pound frame with the big size ten-inch feet was only ten years old. This was just the commencement of the next forty-five years of becoming The Mighty Hercules.

 

 

Author's Note

I am looking for constructive feedback on grammar, content, writing, and ease of flow, length of sentences and paragraphs.

Reviews

[Journal-Writer]

I am new to this site and also new to writing. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading this and how smooth your writing seems to flow. I wanted to continue reading and I certainly found it ever so interesting. I do not know how the rating points work, but I know I want to rate this work of yours high.