Fat Dancing Lessons (xpost)

This was written by my awesome dad and I wanted to share it with you all. 

Fat Dancing Lessons

 

Obesity sucks.  It can sneak up on you.  There are phases.  For me it began when I was a young man who worked and played hard.  I ate whatever struck my fancy, but my caloric intake never exceeded the rate at which I burned those calories.  As time wore on and my activity level slowly decreased, the equation began to shift until my intake caught up to, then surpassed my expenditure and, almost unnoticed, my body began to lay down layers of stored energy in the form of fat.

Over a period of two decades my body went through a series of adjectives; from healthy to chubby, from chubby to plump, from plump to heavy, from heavy to just plain fat, and from fat to morbidly obese.

Obesity has many drawbacks.  I have broken a sweat just looking for the remote.  I’ve begun to consider slip on shoes.  If I jump up and down too energetically in my house the walls move back and forth visibly.  When I fly I have to ask the attendant for seat belt extenders.  Bleh.

The simplest activities become complicated when you’re fat.  Turning over in bed has become a process event.  Lift, shift, roll.  Lift, shift, roll.  Wriggle a bit to free the fat that I’ve pinched under my arm.  Then, waking, I repeat the process.  Lift-shift-roll.  Lift-shift-roll.  Until, arms fumbling for purchase as I will myself into an upright position, I get my legs over the side of the bed.

There are times when, flopping around, trying to maneuver around in bed, I find myself thinking about dancing lessons.

I’ve never had dancing lessons, but my mother did.  I remember waiting with my little sister and watching as the grownups stepped on each other and mumbled red-faced apologies in 3/4 time.  At the ages of 6 and 8 we were vaguely disturbed by the spectacle of these grown people, who were in charge of everything, appearing so terribly incompetent.

And then I remember the diagrams all over the floor of the dance studio.  Numbered feet and dotted lines indicating the steps of the dance.  One-two-three.  One-two-three.  Lift-shift-roll.  Lift-shift-roll.

Fat dancing lessons.

-S.Daniels (my awesome dad)

Great synopsis, I've never quiet looked at it like that.....Thanks for sharing that.