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Bombing Gym Class
A fat kid’s worst nightmare
I was teased for my weight my entire childhood. Other boys made reference to my fatness and even touched me without permission. The girls, not wanting to feel left out, laughed and made fun of how I looked in my clothes or how disgusting I was in general.
My bullying was an equal opportunity endeavor for all of my classmates. You’re welcome, everyone. It was my pleasure. Really.
If I wasn’t running away from the way my classmates thought of my body, I was seeing movies and TV shows and even books that had some strong ideas about people like me. Popular media is replete with negative images of fat people. According to these depictions, fat people are dim-witted, sloppy, and can’t help farting on people like crop-dusting blimps.
It was my mission to be the opposite of this. Especially at school. I went out of my way to avoid being what I thought was a “typical” fat person. I didn’t eat in front of people. I shied away from physical activity. I wore baggy clothes I could hide in like a shell. This is somewhat ironic because big clothes just made me look bigger. That was okay. Because if they were seeing the clothes they were not seeing me.
None of this stopped my peers from bullying me — but it helped me feel a little bit more in control of how much access they had to…
