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Fitting In MAG
I wouldn't ask for a dressing room. My mom always asked for me.
The evening before I had repeatedly risen from my seat and piled on excess noodles suffocated in meat sauce. Then I licked my bowl with the buttered garlic bread, leaving no evidence of the four servings I had inhaled. In the morning I would be forced to lie on my bed and suck in my stomach just to button my jeans. I dreaded school shopping. The sale rack, with its slender size markers, knew my number continued to bloat.
I learned how to eat from my dad: fast and without thinking. In our house, the dinner table involved battle, with the children on defense. One false move and our dinner would be snatched off our plates without warning and gobbled up by our father faster than we could blink. We soon learned to keep a hand up while devouring our chicken strips, and if Mom decided to cook that night we needed to hurry and get seconds before it was gone.
Only one pair of jeans I tried on fit. I lied and told my mother I could button every pair but only needed the jeans that lay guarded in my hands. We walked to the checkout.
I kept my head down as we passed a group of girls. They whispered. I glanced up only long enough to know my place. Their eyes cut at me, hands cupped over their mouths in secrecy.
***
The recess bell rang and I followed two girls in my third grade class out past the monkey bars to the fenced grassy area. We all wore the same clothes that year: khaki pants and polo shirts. Everyone was the same, or that was the idea.
“I like your pants. Where did you get them?” Marcy asked Alicia. I nodded in agreement, thankful they had removed their cupped hands and I could hear the conversation.
“Really? I like yours better,” Alicia replied.
“We should trade. What size are you?” Marcy asked.
“I don't know …” Alicia said, finding the tag in the back of her pants. “Seven.”
“Me too,” Marcy said.
***
I hid in line as I held the jeans, tag folded in so nobody could see the number inscribed on it was 12. I am not a size seven.
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This article has 349 comments.
That was fascinating. I admire your straight-forward narration which gets the point across easily. Most people don't relize that they don't need to stuff in a lot of unnecessarily complicated words to tell a good story, fiction or not.
I liked your description of the family dinner time: "I learned how to eat from my dad: fast and without thinking. In our house, the dinner table involved battle, with the chilren on defense. One false move and our dinner would be snatched off our plates without warning and gobbled up by our father faster than we could blink." Great illustration of the cause and later its unfortunate effects
I just realized that the narrator is in third grade. That's sad, people shouldn't care so much about weight at such a young age. And yet they do.
I loved how its not a typical girls point of view, very different. Great Job, keep writing!
Check out some of my work?
I love this. I wish it were a bit longer, because I really appriciate your writing. great story with a lot of feeling and truth behind it.
id love for you (and anyone else reading this) to read and comment on some of my work telling me what you think! especially my poem
'Tortuer of a King'. appriciated:)
Nice article. I know exactly how hard it is to find clothes that are right for me.
