One More Wedgie for Brenda

The disaster begins

Chapter 1

I blame my parents for making me fat.

In the first place they named me Brenda, which as everyone knows is a fat girl's name.

Brenda Bloutt.

String a concrete block on a motorcycle chain, hang it around your neck, and that's the psychic weight of my name.

Then my parents had the audacity to bring both sets of crazed fat genes to their marriage bed. They are both big people. My mother, for example, likes to embarrass me by careering around Walmart on those battery-powered carts they provide for the lame and infirm. But she's not handicapped, she's just obese. Not one stitch of clothing in her closet is of a non-stretchy fabric. As long as I've known her she's never left the house without committing a major fashion felony. Then there's my father, who has not been able to cut his own toenails since the age of eight. Lately, his feet have been receding even further from view and are probably now a distant memory.

So I have a double dose of flab in my DNA. I could limit myself to 50 calories a day and five years later I'd still be fat. I was chubby as a baby, chunky as a toddler, tubby as a kid, and now porky as a teen.

Even if they invented a machine that could blast off your fat, I'd still be big. Petite I'm not. For example, the last time I measured my chest I had a 37" bust. Sounds promising, but about 35 inches of that is my capacious, big-boned rib cage. With my shirt off I look more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Sophia Loren.

The irony is I think I could do beautiful so well. I wouldn't be condescending and stuck-up like the pretty girls in my high school. I'd be gracious and charming to all–even to the plain Janes.

I guess I always knew it wasn't to be. When I was four I got a Perky Princess cosmetics case for Christmas. Full of little rouge samples, face glitter, mascara, blusher, lipsticks, and perfumes. I unwrapped the package and remember feeling very embarrassed. Like suddenly I was some kind of imposter. I knew even then, this wasn't for me. So I put it aside and tossed my new football around with Buford, my lunky big brother.

Yeah, he got a fat boy's name too.

A mental game I used to play: If not beautiful, why not pretty? If not pretty, why not shapely? If not shapely, why not petite? If not petite, why not slim? If not slim, why not blonde? If not blonde, why not . . . and so on.

In every category of attractiveness, I always struck out.

So if fat and plain was my destiny, why not a numbing dose of stupidity? I could have been one of those jolly fat girls beloved by all.

Or, why hadn't I been born a boy? After all, I had a 50 percent chance of that. Ugly fat guys often get dates with attractive chicks. They seem to have no trouble finding someone to marry them. They're happy and contented drinking beer, watching sports, shooting forest creatures, and driving their big-ass pickup trucks. No one thinks less of them for sporting a massive gut.

Well, I suppose some people do. But it's got to be way easier being a fat guy than a fat girl.

For example, I know for a fact that my brother has had sex with at least four girls. Whereas, I'm still waiting for that first (insane? retarded? desperate?) guy to ask me out.

* * *

My sneaky parents are upset. They snooped around on my Facebook page and discovered I only had four friends. And one of them is Harold, my autistic cousin. The other three are amateur Korean tap-dancers whose videos I've watched on Youtube. None of them is particularly adept, so they're very appreciative when you send them complimentary messages.