by Greg Schmidt

I’m fat. No, really I am. It’s OK, honest. I’m learning to live with it. I appreciate you trying to keep this from me, but the realization has sunk in. I now see the world, or at least myself, differently. This new heightened self-awareness has come to me in various forms.

For instance, our pets have been hovering around me more lately. They look at me with strange faces that I have come to understand as the hunger face. I think they now see me as a potential meal. Both the dog and the cat have taken to licking my bare flesh whenever they have the chance. The pores of my skin must ooze trans fat and they are feasting on my flesh. To think that I used to believe the animals simply loved me for who I was. Is it possible that man’s best friend is looking at me and thinking to himself, “Hey Dad, let’s go for a walk. Then you can have your heart attack and I can feast on your flesh for a couple of hours. Yum, you will be tasty”? I don’t begin to know what the cat thinks, but then again who does, besides the pet psychic?

My kids have been pretty good about not discussing my weight. They are more interested in the thinning of the hair on my head.

And my wife, God bless her, she says nothing. For all I know she looks at me and sees George Clooney. That works for me, because when I look at her, I see that great Shakespearean actress Kirstin Price.

She has, however, dropped a hint or two about my weight recently. “The arms on that shirt seem to be getting shorter,” she said one day. Yeah, I’m 48 years old, my arms must be getting longer. That’s it. Not long ago she brought home a scale for our bathroom. “Look what I got for us,” she said. Which really meant, “Hey fat guy, why don’t you hop on this and see how heavy you have become.”

To appease her, and satisfy my own growing concerns, I stepped on the scale. Now I didn’t expect it to register 185 pounds. But simply emitting the sound of a cow mooing was a little much.

Now that I have become moderately obsessed with my weight, I watched, with new eyes, that commercial for a home exercise machine. The guy on the TV says he is 48 years old and in the best shape of his life. He plays bass in a rock band and seems to enjoy his life. Seeing the commercial in this new light, I decided to change my life. I ordered the DVD and borrowed a bass guitar.

We have no room for one of those fancy machines, but I’ll sit on the couch, watch the exercise video every day and play some bass. Maybe I can feel thinner. In the meantime, I am grateful that there are some who care for me regardless of how I look. That thought gets me through the days with joy. We should all be so lucky.

The Reverend Dr. Greg Schmidt is pastor of the Congregational
Church of Harvard.