Sunday, June 28, 2009

2 fat-phobic moments this weekend

We went to my son's this weekend - I missed my grandson's 13th birthday, so we went down there to take him shopping for it, a couple of weeks late.
Most of the time, when we go down there and stay at the motel, I go swimming in the motel pool and use the hot tub. Until this past weekend, I've never had anyone make any nasty comments about my size. This time, though, some guy was in there with his wife and their young son (I think the kid was probably about 5 years old). The kid was cute, wearing goggles, throwing a weighted toy on the bottom of the pool and jumping in to pick it up. His parents were sitting in lounge chairs, mom was reading a book, and dad was drinking beer (out of glass bottles) and eating Cheetos. I had been alternating pool and hot tub for about 3 hours, and finally got out of the pool to sit in one of the chairs for a while and talk to my daughter-in-law and DH for a while, and the two grandsons (Mykel and Austin) played in the pool. When I got up to go sit in the hot tub for a bit, the little kid's dad said to his wife "If you ever get that fat, I'll kill you." I didn't hear him say it, he was behind me and the kids were noisy, but Tina heard him and it pissed her off, big time. My son had just called her and asked her to meet him at our room so he could change into his swim trunks, so when Tina went out to meet him, she stopped at the desk to ask if beverages in glass containers were allowed in the pool area. When they said no, she told them there was a man in there drinking beer in glass bottles. So the desk clerk went in and told him to finish the beer in the bottle, throw it away and he couldn't drink anything out of a glass container in there. Keep in mind that DH and my grandsons were still in the pool area, and Tina and Jon came back after the desk clerk had told the guy no glass bottles in the pool area. So when we all finally get ready to leave, who gets dirty looks from the SOB? DH, and he doesn't know what he's done to deserve it (neither do I, because I don't find out about any of this until we get back to our room). So then Tina tells us what he said about me, what she did, and that that was why DH got the dirty look, SOB thought DH had ratted him out (which makes no sense to me, DH had never left the pool area at all, Tina had been in and out several times, going to have a cigarette). I told her she should have told me what he said, that I would have had several choice responses for him. She wanted to know what I would have said and I told her I'd have told him: "If you'd kill your wife just because she got fat, then I feel sorry for her having to be married to a shallow asshat like you. She certainly deserves better than that." I also would have told him that my body was not public property and he had no right to comment on it at all, that he didn't know me from Adam and his opinion wasn't worth the breath it took to speak it.
When DH and I were getting ready to check out this morning, we were walking down the hall with all of our stuff (I was carrying my purse, my soft-sided cooler with a couple of sodas in it, the camera bag, and the bag that had all of our swimming gear in it, DH was carrying the other cooler that had his soda in it and our bag with our clothes in it), we passed that SOB in the hallway and got dirty looks from him again. WTF is it with people who have said nasty things about others, and done shit they knew they shouldn't have done (it's posted by the door into the pool area "NO GLASS CONTAINERS ALLOWED") that they have to blame someone else when they get caught? Fucker is lucky that I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about me, whether I'm fully dressed, or just in a swimsuit. It wasn't worth my time and effort to tell him he's an idiot, he's probably been told that more times than he can remember. And I hate to tell him, he can be nasty all he wants, I'm still going to use the pool and the hot tub and I'm still going to wear my swimsuit, and I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm not there to impress them, I'm there to have a good time with DH and the rest of my family.
That was incident number two. Incident number one was when we went out to dinner on Friday night. Jon wanted to eat at the China Buffet, so that was where we went. We were picking out what we wanted to eat, and another family was trying to decide what they wanted to eat. One of the kids was a cute little girl, about 5 or 6, and her mom told her "Tell me what you want, and I'll put it on the plate for you." The little girl said she wanted some of the sweet & sour chicken and her mom told her no, that would make her fat, she needed to eat the meat/veggies/mushrooms instead. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking "If you don't want her eating certain things, then fix her plate for her and don't tell her she can pick out what she wants to eat. Telling her she can pick out what she wants to eat, then telling her she can't have it because it's going to make her fat sure as shit isn't doing her any favors. Good way to give her a disordered relationship with food."
I normally don't run into this kind of shit very often, maybe once a year or so, but twice in one weekend, that was just too much.
But we did have a good visit, went rummage-saling with Tina and the boys on Saturday morning while Jon was at his motorcycle license classes. Mykel found an almost-complete set of golf clubs with bag for $1, and Tina found some books for Jon and some clothes for the "reds" (her 3 red-headed nieces). Austin didn't find anything he wanted, but he'll read the books when Jon is done with them. DH found a couple of kissing angels to add to his small collection, and I didn't find anything I wanted (I usually look for Noritake painted china plates, but those are kinda rare at rummage sales).
It was hilarious watching Mykel hit the golf ball (and the tennis balls) with his new clubs. Max (the pit bull) was out of his kennel, and he was chasing the balls. Mykel and Austin would hit the balls, then run and try to get them before Max could (they weren't successful). Max would get the ball, run off with it, they would chase him, he would get tired of running from them, flop down in the shade, they would try to sneak up on him, he would wait until they were close enough to touch him, and off he would go again. I'm not sure who had more fun - the dog, the boys, or us adults watching them. And Max is not easily fooled. Austin grabbed Max's soccer ball from the kennel and threw it, hollering "go get it, Max", thinking Max would drop the golf ball or the tennis ball. Nope, Max knew they weren't hitting the soccer ball with the golf clubs...........he wasn't having any part of that at all.
All in all, it was a good weekend, in spite of the fat-phobia.

7 comments:

  1. I'm glad you didn't let the jackass bother you; what a total asshole to say such a thing a) to the woman he supposedly loves and b) in hearing of your family and c) at all!

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  2. From a Damaged Logic point of view, one could suppose this asshat was giving your hubby the fuzzy-eyeball because he LET you get fat and live. Worse, your hubby has the gaul to LET you be seen in public. Obviously your hubby is a man who has no regard for his possessions.

    Score on the Rummaging. My wife (Whom I have allowed to live as well. Shame on me) got me hooked on yard sales some time ago. Once I was introduced to the aspect of 'Really-cool-stuph-you-don't-actually-need-but-can-get-for-a-song' it was pretty much over.

    Sounds like you had a great weekend and, after all, happiness is REALLY the best revenge.

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  3. purplegirl - For too many years I cared about what people thought about how I looked, and tried to meet their expectations, and was never good enough. It got to the point that I decided to say to hell with all of them, since nothing I could do would ever meet with their approval, I would do what I wanted with my looks and to hell with all of them. If they're that shallow, that they base their like/dislike of me only on my looks, then I don't need them in my life. And for people I don't know, and will probably never see again, I'm not going to waste my time getting mad or hurt at what they think or say.

    bilt4huggin - Yeah, and what the SOB doesn't know is that I was this fat when I met and married my husband 2 1/2 years ago, so DH wasn't basing his love for me on my size, he loved me for other reasons (and two of his ex-wives were thin, one was short and fat, so he's not a man who looks at a woman and judges her by her body alone).
    DH likes rummage sales, and we go whenever there's spare cash, or something we're looking for that we think we can find at a rummage sale and not have to buy new (recycle, ya know). It was a great weekend for sure.

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  4. "If you ever get that fat, I'll kill you."
    That is really disturbing. I'd venture to guess that fatphobia isn't that guy's only problem.

    And the story of the mom and daughter at the buffet made me sad.

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  5. This makes me furious. I knew a guy once that openly stated he hoped his wife never got fat. I heard him say it. I was good friends with his wife....a tall thin woman.

    His wife told me herself that he had an obsession with models and new the name and statistics on every super model in the world. I never could figure out why she married him. He was a truly creepy guy that made my skin crawl.

    In my opinion, guys like that are insecure jackasses with a tenuous sexual identity and a near inability to produce children the old fashioned way....if you know what I mean. Their only relationship with women is porn. They can't handle real flesh and blood women in the real world. They prefer their women in pics and pieces...not whole and real.

    He has the problem, not you.

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  6. called527 - Yeah, I'd guess that he sees his wife as a possession that should stay as pristine as the day he first acquired her, which is really sick.

    Kat - Yeah, I wasn't real happy about it, but arguing with idiots like that isn't going to change their minds, and they manage to twist it around so that, in their minds, I would be the asshole for bothering to try and set them straight. Which is why I don't waste my breath, and why I don't even bother to get really mad anymore. I can only deal with a certain amount of anger before I flip out and go ballistic, and going ballistic doesn't usually solve anything, it just makes the situation worse. I prefer to pick my battles, and he was a lost cause, in more ways than one.

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  7. I LOVE this BLOG! I am the Un Diet Coach www.theundietcoach.com so I am all about Anti-DIet. And I am an advocate for positive body image, self esteem and balanced living. Rock on!
    www.theundietcoach.com;)

    Bridget Loves

    ReplyDelete

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