Fat by James Keene Read Free Book Online Page A

better eat something before I die!” said the person looking like he just recently consumed the sum of all the calories needed to be stored in a fallout shelter for a family of four to survive a year underground.  I have yet to see a three hundred pounder starve to death.  A kid eats a bit less during dinner?  Parents freak out and force him to clean his plate before getting any dessert.  A kid skips a meal?  Better rush him to the doctor and demand a full evaluation for some mystery disease.  So parents keep the feedbag on their little porkers to stave off those dangerous hunger pangs.  Today, death is more common from too much food rather than too little.       
         “Did you get him into some cardio activities?  Any sports?”
         “We tried baseball and soccer.  He didn’t like it, and the coach was such a mean old guy we had to quit.  We have taken him mini-golfing a couple times, though, and he loves that.  It’s better than nothing, right?” 
         Better than nothing?  It’s the same as nothing.  I imagine Xander haphazardly knocking his golf ball around with putter in one hand while nursing an ice cream cone in the other.  There would be chocolate and vanilla melt around his lips, on his fingers and palms, on the putter grip, on the neon blue ball, and dripping onto the artificial turf.  He bends over to grab his ball from the hole and his pants split with a shrill staccato of popping stitches releasing painful tension.  People start laughing at him.  Xander starts crying.  The heaving of his sobs makes his ice cream scoop fall from the cone to the fuzzy plastic green.  More crying.  Kate runs over and fishes a Snickers from her purse, stuffing it into Xander’s hands to try to quell the scene.  He starts shrieking about his ice cream, stomping at the ground and sending ripples down his abdominal rolls.  Everyone stops their own ice cream eating and putt-putting to stare, shaking their heads at Xander, which also causes their own massive bellies to ripple from side to side.  Rain starts falling and the ice cream melt flows down towards the hole, circling away as if into a drain.
         “You know, Kate, there are summer camps dedicated to overweight kids.  Maybe that’s what he needs, a separation from his usual routines.”
         “We tried something like that, but on the second day of fat camp, Xander fell down playing kickball and hit his head, so we had to pull him out of the program.”
         “Okay.”
         “I mean, he burst his forehead open!  What kind of supervision is that?  Xander has a real high pain tolerance so when I heard he was crying, I knew he was really hurt.  I had to force them to rush Xander to the Emergency Room.  When I met him there, I literally could see his skull through his cut!”
         “Well, I can’t imagine...”
         “Then the ER doc there tries to say he can close it with some glue.  No way!  Not for my baby’s face!  I had to force the doc there to call in a plastic surgeon to repair the gushing cut.  Xander had to be put under for the repair, but look at his face, it was worth it.”
         I peered over at Xander’s forehead and saw a half centimeter line of lighter skin.  This was the life threatening gash?  There was no way it was more than just a scrape.  Kate implying severity based on Xander’s crying despite his pain tolerance was ridiculous.  Every parent says their kid has a high pain tolerance, so much so that the claim has no meaning.  No parent is going to admit that their kid is a babied wimp created from their constant helicoptering and persistent positive feedback from exaggerated overjoyed reactions over trivial happenings.  In reality, most kids like Xander will cry murder even if a ladybug flutters onto their arm.  And calling in a plastic surgeon for that little nick?  A surgeon trained to reconstruct massive deformity being demanded by some mom to