In order... Princess, Brain, Basketcase, Athlete, Criminal... but this is a sliding scale

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.