NOTE: I want to thank everyone for the support and love this
last 45 days between posts. I have had a lot of messages in my Instagram and
Facebook DM’s and my email, asking if I am ok, and will be writing again… I was
concentrating on work a bit more during a frantic period.. but I am going to
make a better effort to write more often again. Its good for me to purge my
mind.
Now back to regularly scheduled programming:
My kids and I have started a tradition. My 11 year old, Abe,
asked me the other day what it meant to “pour one out for your homies”, and we
just so happened to be driving to Red Robin for dinner. I told him that it is
tradition to pour some of your drink out as a sort of offering for your fallen
homies. When we arrived at dinner, he
took 3 fries out and laid them on the table (he actually threw them on the
ground under the table but that’s a dick move so I made him get them and lay
them on the table). He said it was his version of “pouring one out for his
homies”. Seeing as how Abe is the softest, pinkest, dude on the planet, I asked
“you have a lot of friends who are victims of the streets?” He said no, but he
wanted to pay homage to three people we recently lost the benefit of: Stan Lee,
Stephen Hawking, and John Hughes. I told him this was a cool idea (Well, I
actually said “Cough cough, NERD cough
cough… but I eventually relented to this being a good idea) Honestly, it was a
rad idea. What an awesome collection of people to feed your mind with. Humor,
fantasy, and science at its best.
This interaction made me hungry for some Hughes action. We
started with “Weird Science”.. yes, I let an 11 year old, and an 8 year old
watch “Weird Science”. You may think this makes me a questionable parent, to which
I would reply, yeah… I probably am, now go fuck yourself. We followed this up
with a viewing of one of their favorites, “Breakfast Club”. What a great movie.
Of course I was shocked they didn’t go with Ferris Buehler, but I was super
happy they didnt.
I think everyone who has seen “Breakfast Club” has tried to
decide which roles they, and their friends, embody. Are you a brain… an athlete…
a basket case… a princess… or a criminal? We have all tried to assign these
characters to ourselves, and our friends.
I bet you are asking, HOW THE FUCK DOES THE “BREAKFAST CLUB”
RELATE TO YOUR STRUGGLES WITH BEING FAT?!?!
When Abe and I did the inevitable contemplation of who we
are in relation to the characters, Abe of course compared his studious nature to
being like Brian, the brain. I struggled more with this. I was having trouble,
because I don’t know that I relate to any of them. Then I realized, I am “Larry
Lester”
Here is the quote about Larry Lester for those of you who don’t
remember who he is…
Andrew: I taped Larry Lester's buns together.
Brian Johnson: That was you?
Andrew: Yeah, you know him?
Brian Johnson: Yeah, I know him.
Andrew: Well, then you know how hairy he is. And
when they pulled the tape off, most of his hair came off and some - some skin,
too.
Claire Standish: Oh my God.
Andrew: And the bizarre thing is that I did it for
my old man. I tortured this poor kid because I wanted him to think that I was
cool. He's always going off about how when he was in school and all the wild things
he used to do. And I got the feeling that he was disappointed that I never cut
loose on anyone, right? So I'm sitting in the locker room and I'm taping up my
knee, and Larry's undressing a couple lockers down from me. And he's kinda,
he's kinda skinny. Weak. And I started thinkin' about my father, and his
attitude about, about weakness. And the next thing I knew, I jumped on top of
him and started whaling on him. And my friends, they just laughed and cheered
me on. And afterwards, when I'm sitting in Vernon's office, all I could think
about was Larry's father and Larry having to go home and explain what happened
to him. And the humiliation - the fucking humiliation he must have felt. It
must have been unreal. I mean, how... how do you apologize for something like
that? There's no way. It's all because of me and my old man. God, I fucking
hate him. He's like this mindless machine that I can't even relate to anymore.
[crying, imitating his father]
Andrew: 'Andrew! You've got to be number one! I
won't tolerate any losers in this family! Your intensity is for shit! Win! Win!
Win!' You son of a bitch. You know, sometimes I wish my knee would give. And I
wouldn't be able to wrestle anymore. And he could forget all about me.
I have felt an internal inferiority my whole life. I think a
lot of us do. We wear our weight issues as a sense of embarrassment that we aren’t
living up to something. For me, I enter so many interactions and situations
with a sense of shame. I feel that “fucking humiliation” of feeling inferior in
the eyes of people who love me, as well as people who I have never even met.
This bleeds into my psyche both consciously and undoubtedly subconsciously, and
effects my sense of worth. It sounds absurd. I have created this inferiority
complex based on a humiliation that lives in my head. So often I walk into a
room and feel that open exposed feeling akin to broadcasting an embarrassing
detail to a loved one. I feel like the whole world is “taping my buns” in the
form of judging me for being fat. Actions that make us feel shame do not have
to be physically degrading. Mental degradation is just as shameful and makes us
feel just as weak. There is a feeling of inferiority and shame that comes from
being the fat kid. I don’t fear having to tell my dad that my buns were taped
together… I do fear the shame of being the fat guy at the gym, or the fat guy
chatting at the bar, or the fat dad to my kids friends.
Every time a fat kid
-
Speaks to a girl
-
Deals with a handsome peer
-
Orders food in a restaurant
-
Shops for clothes
There is a feeling of shameful humiliation involved with what should be menial tasks. Most often, this
is created in our own brains, and projected on to other people. Very few people
have ever pointed at me and mocked me, but the feelings of shame and humiliation
are the same regardless of the validity or the source. Perceived ridicule is
just as hard as real ridicule. No one has to point and laugh, sometimes we
point and laugh at ourselves.
This type of thinking can create a toxic internal cycle. We
start to live according to our own low expectations. We don’t always even realize
we are doing it. But I am a firm believer that we live according to the
guidelines of our self esteem. Low expectations we create for ourselves, as
well as low expectations that come with some societal views of weight issues,
can create patterns of self defeating behavior. We need expectations and
standards for ourselves, and if those standards are low… we will get stuck in
habits that lead to negative outcomes.
“Breakfast Club” is timeless. It is a perfect combo of both
the stereotypical clique societal structure of high school life, but also…
there is another connection I think gets overlooked. This is a connection I
need to strive to remember. This is something that can help me break free of my
inferiority and keep me striving forward.
Like I said earlier, I think everyone who has seen “Breakfast
Club” has tried to decide which roles they, and their friends, embody…. Which ROLE
they embody…. Which ROLE.. Are you a
brain… an athlete… a basket case… a princess… or a criminal? We have all tried
to assign these characters to ourselves, and other people do this to us.
However, “Breakfast Club” could also be
seen as a predecessor to Disneys “Inside Out”. The interactions between the
kids in the movie, all take place in our heads everyday. Do we follow our
criminal side down hallway A, or our Jock side down the activities hall? We are
all made up of all these characters. All of these personas compete for time in
our minds. The world may see one side of us more than the other sides, but that
doesn’t mean we have to believe other peoples views of us. The key to emotional
stability is to have all of our personalities able to sit around the library,
smoking pot together and having open dialogue. When I get too lost in one side
of my identity, it stifles my growth. I need to remember I am a brain who can
trust my thoughts and drive my life forward through intellectual pursuit... but
I can still be an athlete, and I can get more out of my body as well. I can be
whatever the fuck I want to be.. and I can be as many of these personas as I
want.. even if you “see me how you want to see me”. I struggle to remember that I don’t need to “fill
A role”… I am a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal,
and mother fucking Larry Lester too.
