Your Possible Pasts
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Fat Henry asked me one night,"were you fat as a kid?".
Now Fat Henry was just like his name suggested...three feet wide and four feet tall. A hairless obese hobbit.
Fat Henry's claim to fame was that a few years ago he had won second place in a costume ball dressed as an infant in diapers suckling onto a very large milk bottle.(a beer bottle with a rubber teat over it's mouth)
Most judges had agreed that he looked like a bonny baby.
A freakishly scary thirty year old bonny baby.
But the first place went to a man who was dressed as a half man-half woman.
He won partly because of his effort and attention to detail,that is, most of it was real- on the woman's side the long hair was real and on the man's side the moustache was real, (and Fat Henry claims that the breast on the woman's side was realistically soft and bouncy- something Fat Henry discovered when he was being breast fed by this hermaphrodite),and partly because he looked really pretty as a woman and really handsome as a man, which had an eerily disconcerting effect on most of the people who apart from not having seen a woman for quite a few months, were also in various states of inebriation.
To one Indian officer, the faux hermaphrodite looked like Ardhanareeshwara, the Indian god who is half man-half woman.
Was I fat as a kid? Fat Henry wanted to know.
This was an exciting prospect for me- a chance to recreate my past, and possibly help someone make the right choice.
Sure! Why not!
Just like how my current girlfriend is a Maxim supermodel,I as a kid, was grossly overweight.
I weighed 100 kilos, and looked like a vertical zeppelin.Only I didn't float.I lumbered.
But when I turned eighteen I had a mild heart attack, which left me worried about the direction in which I was going with my health.
I made a firm decision about gaining control over my health issues.This was the time I joined my training for merchant navy.
It was training where my total transformation took place.
All the trainees had to undergo a brutal regimen of hardships and studies all day, everyday in the training camp.Most trainers were ex-navy personnel who were the majority stock holders for your ass.
Yes...they made it clear on the first day - Your ass belonged to them.They had the majority of stocks.
Five miles of jogging at five in the morning followed by calisthenics and a half hour of marching under the sun.
The food supplies were meagre, there were no snacks available anywhere in the vicinity, and one wasn't allowed to keep contraband food items in his cabin.
I dropped 30 kilos like a sack of greased hot potato bricks- yeah, that quick!
(Somebody call the Metaphor Police.There's a guy run amok with his metaphors here)
And when I joined the ship, I worked on an old rust bucket (whose name I'm not privileged to disclose), and the living and work conditions were so brutal that I lost 20 more kilos- but this time it was slow and brutally painful- like trying to disembowel a sumo with a wooden spoon- and no fun either(unless you happen to be a chubby chaser & a serial killer who likes sumos).
Once I lost my weight, I promised myself that I'd never gain it back.
I learnt all about healthy eating and healthy living and exercise...and experimented with all the knowledge I had accumulated over the years.
I still do.
And now, people no longer remember the old me...it's as if the fat old version of me never existed...And I no longer associate myself with my past or its crippling effects on my health and self-esteem.
Hallelujah ! I'm healed!
So , to sum it all up, I said to Fat Henry; If a lard bucket like me can lose weight, anyone can lose weight, implying that he too could lose weight, if one has the drive, and the zeal (and brutally harsh conditions that force you) to lose weight.
That story was my DC Elseworlds, one of all my possible pasts...some that have existed or might have existed, and others that can't, or couldn't or shouldn't...this is one of those stories...
By the way, How did you come to the conclusion that I was a fat kid? I asked Fat Henry.
Oh, that's easy...you get folds of skin that bunch up when you bend your neck.
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