You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

by Rivenbark, Celia

  There was a long line at the pretzel shop, so I had time to consider that a smoothie would be a lot healthier. Besides, did I really want to end up in a rocking chair coated in mustard and suspected of being a pimp? A smoothie it would be.

  But nothing is easy these days, my hons.

  Me: “I’ll have a strawberry smoothie, please. Small is fine.”

  Clerk: “Certainly. Do you have a rewards card with us?”

  Me: “Huh? Uh, no. I don’t. Sorry.”

  Clerk: (brightening): “Oh, don’t worry! You can get one today. You can save 5 percent with every purchase if you just fill out this (sounds of papers folding out and onto the floor) membership application. The annual fee is only $20!”

  While I snorted at the notion that my “membership” might be passed over by some committee in a plush board room somewhere (it’s not exactly an exclusive “club” when the application is handed to you with banana goo on it, now is it?), the clerk was patient.

  Me: “So, if I give you $20 now, I’ll save, let’s see … 37 cents on this smoothie today?”

  Clerk: “That’s right!”

  Me: “Mmmmmm. Pass.” This was almost as much fun as dealing with the poor little thing at Bath & Body Works earlier. She had apologized profusely for telling me that soaps were $3.50 each.

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” she had said. “They’re actually four for $10.”

  “But that’s $2.50 each,” I said gently.

  “I know,” she said solemnly. “I had the price wrong.”

  “Yes, but it’s even better. $2.50 is less than $3.50.”

  “OMG!” she squealed. “I can’t wait to tell everybody.”

  So, yes, it had been a frustrating day mathwise at the mall and things weren’t getting any better, though I did have a nice little shopping bag full of heavenly lotions and soaps that I practically stole.

  The clerk seemed genuinely upset that I wasn’t going to buy the rewards membership.

  She turned around, disconsolate, and began to make my strawberry smoothie. I could’ve sworn she was crying.

  She placed it beside the cash register and I reached for my wallet. At last.

  Suddenly, she perked up.

  “Good news!” she said after reading something on her screen. “You have been selected to receive a free trial of Entertainment Weekly, Time, or Better Homes & Gardens magazines. Just fill this out (another form, this time with strawberry goo on it) and your subscription will be on its way!”

  Me: “No, thanks, really. Can I just get my smoothie? It’s starting to sweat worse than Tim Gunn in a Kmart.”

  Clerk: “Of course. But first, would you like to apply for our Frequent Smoothie Card? It’s not as good as the Gold Rewards, I’m afraid, but you will get one free smoothie after you pay for the first twenty-five.”

  “Right now, we’re getting a slow start with number one,” I grumbled. “OK, if it’s free, sure, I’ll take it.”

  Clerk: “And here’s a scratch-off just for coming in. You could win anywhere from five cents to $500 just by scratching off the little berry symbols. Didja win anything?”

  I, to no one’s real surprise, won a “Sorry! Try Again!”

  “Look, I don’t want to be rude but can I just get my drink? I don’t have a gold membership, I don’t want to buy magazines, and now I’ve got all this scratch-off crud under my fingernails.”

  Clerk: “You bet! That’ll be $4.45. May I have your telephone number starting with area code first?”

  My right hand to God, this really happened.

  “No.”

  “Ohhhh,” the clerk said, smiling. “I get it. You should know that we don’t sell your personal information to anyone if that’s what you’re worried about. We just want to send you free coupons for special offers in the mail. And if you share your e-mail address with us, you will automatically be entered in our grand prize sweepstakes!”

  “OK,” I said. “You win. I have my own Web site and you can e-mail me directly from there. It’s kind of a long address. Are you ready? You might want to write this down. It’s double-u double-u double-u dot give me my mother-humpin’ smoothie before I smash your face in dot com.”

  She looked genuinely hurt. Go figure. I guess someone wasn’t going to have a “berry good” afternoon after all.

  5

  Moral Fiber Can’t Help Your Colon

  The older you get, the more fiber obsessed you become. Not me, mind you, but others. If I had a dollar for every time my Aunt Verlie told me she hasn’t taken a decent dump since the Carter administration, I’d be wealthy indeed. Grossed-out, but wealthy. As it stands right now, I’m just grossed out.

  People of a certain age give up any pretense that it’s unseemly to discuss bowel habits in polite company. And by polite company, I mean the post office, the grocery store, the bank, even church.

  “Well, it says right there in the U.S. Bible that where two or more are gathered, you can talk about this stuff,” says Verlie. She’s gotten a little dotty lately and tends to put “U.S.” in front of everything.

  “I was at the U.S. Post Office,” she starts and I can’t resist saying, “What? Not the Mexican Post Office? You sure?”

  Oh, don’t judge me. Verlie would worry the shit out of a septic tank, and taking her around town on her errands because her grown son is a male-type person and therefore unable to be of any use whatsoever to an aging relative, has given me plenty of hours in the car to hear about her “piles” as she calls them. Apparently this was popular vernacular for hemorrhoids in, oh, 1817.

  “It’s just a U.S. nuisance is what it is,” said Verlie one day after I’d picked her up from her eye doctor appointment. We were on the way to Walmart, where I knew she would demand to see the butcher and discuss which meats would be easier on her colon.

  “I don’t think Walmart has a butcher,” I said. “It’s just some guy who puts out the pretty little cellophane-wrapped packages.”

  “Well, he’ll know what’s what,” she huffed. “He can recommend some U.S. meat for me.”

  I tell Verlie that she should be more concerned about fruits and vegetables for fiber and maybe even ease up on the meat consumption, but she just gives me a sideways look that conveys the obvious: “If you know so damn much, why does your ass hang off either side of the bucket seats in your Mustang, little missy?”

  Even so.

  I convinced Aunt Verlie to try a few high-fiber cereals, which did seem to help with The Problem for a while.

  But all cereal is not created equal and it wasn’t a surprise to me when someone blew the whistle on those wacky cereal companies whose claims were getting kinda silly, even to Verlie.

  Like the “miracle tonic” salesmen who hoodooed an unsophisticated prairie public, the folks at Kellogg’s even claimed that, yes, Froot Loops were good for you.

  It’s not even real froot! How could it possibly be good for you? And what is froot anyway?

  General Mills was just as bad, practically claiming that Cheerios could cure male pattern baldness and give you X-ray vision.

  I imagine the FDA cracked down on some of the more outlandish claims.

  And, somewhere, there were real humans who were actually shocked that they got busted. I dreamed up this little conversation one day while waiting for Verlie to get her “hairs done” as she likes to say. Her son was on a cruise to St. Lucia. He’s an asshole.

  Kellogg’s bigshot: “So you say we’re not going to be allowed to claim that Frosted Mini-Wheats improve a child’s attention span by 20 percent?”

  Company attorney: “That’s right. Because, in point of fact, that’s just kind of, uh, made up.”

  Kellogg’s BS: “I hear you. What if we say that if you eat Frosted Mini-Wheats, you will improve your IQ by twenty points? How ’bout we say that?”

  Attorney: “No.”

  Kellogg’s BS: “So I’m guessing the whole leaping tall buildings in a single bound is out, too?”

  Attorney: “Rightarooni
e.”

  Kellogg’s BS: “And we really have to sign something saying that we won’t make misleading claims on our cereal boxes anymore?”

  Attorney: “Yes, that’s the gist of it.”

  Kellogg’s BS: “But what about the claim that Cocoa Krispies will help support your child’s immune system? We can still say that, right? I mean this is still America the last time I looked.”

  Attorney: “Nope, you can’t say that because it’s technically not true. Eating cereals that contain up to 50 percent sugar don’t keep your kid from getting colds or anything else. We just, sorta, made it up.”

  Kellogg’s BS: “But cereal is good for you! It has vitamins and fiber. People love fiber! Look! I have a letter here from a woman in North Carolina … Verlie something … says that, until lately, she hasn’t had a decent …”

  Attorney: “Doesn’t matter.”

  Kellogg’s BS: “OK. But did you know that it has been clinically proven that if you eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes every day you’ll never get cancer?”

  Attorney: “No, it hasn’t.”

  Kellogg’s BS: “Yeah, I know.”

  After Verlie’s hairs were done, she sank back into the front seat of my car, pushing my right thigh a bit more than necessary as she buckled up.

  “Mercy!” she said. “Aren’t you uncomfortable in this small car? You ought to get one of those Hummers like my Fielding drives. (But of course.) He says it’s real comfortable, although I haven’t ridden in it myself. Field says he doesn’t want to get the floor mats dirty yet.”

  Suddenly, she brightened.

  “Let’s go to KFC,” she said. “It’s American, you know.”

  Do I ever! I once went out of my way to visit the Louisville, Kentucky, museum that honors the late Colonel Harland Sanders. There was even an animatronic likeness to gaze upon.

  I asked her why she wanted to go there, because she usually complains that fried foods cause her to be “bound.” Don’t ask.

  “The man on TV said that we should unthink KFC,” Verlie said, fishing for a coupon in the bottom of her trusty Vera Bradley Hipster, perhaps the most poorly named product ever.

  Verlie is very big on Vera Bradley because if there’s one thing she hates worse than not crapping regularly, it’s a “too-heavy pocketbook.” I have heard this many hundreds of times. A heavy purse makes her cranky.

  “Fielding says I shouldn’t wear anything but Vera Bradley,” Verlie said. “My Field says that a heavy pocketbook could cause me to lose my balance and fall down and break my hip and then where would I be?”

  Probably not anywhere near Field’s house, I thought. Look, I know that there are devoted, helpful sons out there who tend to their ailing, aging moms and dads but I’m not talking about those two. I’m talking about Field, who it was just like to toss out something like “Vera Bradley” when he probably just overheard it in an airport somewhere. Did I mention Field is an asshole?

  But Verlie, for all her annoying quirks and uncooperative colon, deserves better, so if she needed to unthink her fast-food chicken, then I was all in.

  As we scanned the new grilled menu at KFC, I couldn’t help but think it was weird, like going to the International House of Pancakes and discovering that it was really just Wisconsin and a couple of Dakotas.

  The name didn’t even fit anymore. I could picture Colonel Sanders’ animatronic statue at the museum coming alive just like Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum (the first one, not the shitty sequel) to demand an explanation. Something along the lines of “WTF, KFC?”

  Verlie said she’d buy mine, too, because one of her church circle friends had printed out some free chicken coupons from the Oprah show Web site.

  That’s so Oprah. Bless her heart, she honestly believes that we still care what she weighs. Oprah is crazy about the new grilled chicken at KFC. She spent a whole show pushing that chicken and put those free coupons on the “interweb” for Verlie and her friends to try.

  Sadly, as I told Verlie over a Snack Pack with slaw, this led to a riot in the streets of Manhattan. When I saw investment bankers and fashion industry bigwigs slugging it out in the streets for a free wing and thigh dinner, I realized the economy really might not bounce back. Police were called, I told Verlie. Fistfights ensued. Ugly words were hollered. It was like watching an old Springer show without the white-trash chick with the muffin top spilling over her Gloria Vanderbilt-Dollar Tree jeans while yanking out her boyfriend’s new lover’s weave. Yeah. It was just like that.

  Verlie was only half paying attention to me. I think she thinks I talk way too much and maybe I do.

  Finally she said that we should send a thank-you note to Oprah for the free chicken, and I said I’d get right on that.

  Verlie said she would’ve saved the coupon for Fielding but he doesn’t like to eat in fast-food places because there are too many “U.S. lowlifes” hanging around.

  Right. Better his cousin should take his aged mama to those sorts of places. I ordered some stress-related banana pudding and knew I’d get “the look” for having done so when we got back in the car.

  “You could stand to eat a few more vegetables,” Verlie said, rather pointedly I thought. “Even Michelle Obama, the U.S. first lady, is planting a garden right there at the White House. Don’t you think it’s so wonderful how she’s trying so hard to get all those fat little public school children in Washington to eat right?”

  Well, of course I do, but, as I told Verlie, it irks me on some level when I read about Michelle Obama and Julia Roberts composting and planting gardens. Are there any other ways that brilliant, successful women can make the rest of us feel like slugs? Isn’t it enough that I buy fresh produce, but now I gotta grow it myself? Using composting advice from a movie star?

  “Oh, you’re just getting yourself all worked up,” said Verlie, who was working on her gums with a toothpick. “You do that all the time, you know. It’s probably the menopause. When I got that, I was always running off at the mouth about every little thing.”

  “Watch it, Aunt Verlie!” I said. “There’s a speed bump coming up and you could give yourself a lobotomy.”

  “My Fielding says you can get heart problems from dirty gums. A word to the wise, little missy.”

  “What I’m saying, Aunt Verlie, is that we women are always finding ourselves one step forward and two steps back. It’s never going to be enough no matter how much we do because if the wife of the leader of the free world and the most bankable actress in Hollywood can do it, why can’t we? Let me just put hoeing and weeding on the chore list this week. It just never, ever stops being enough and I’m tired!”

  Verlie looked shocked at my outburst.

  “Oh, honey, you’re upset. Everybody knows those women don’t actually do all that stuff themselves. Fielding says Joe Biden probably tends that garden ’cause that’s all he’s got the brains to do.”

  “Your son is a moron,” I said. Uh-oh. Did I just say that out loud?

  Fortunately Verlie was too distracted to hear me. I definitely didn’t want to get into a political argument with Aunt Verlie, who voted for Fred Thompson in the Republican primary because he’d “won so many cases on Law & Order.” Plus she has a maddening habit of describing Barack Obama as “clean and articulate,” as though this was somehow a surprise.

  “Well, he’s really a nationalized American, you know,” she said, whispering the word “nationalized.”

  “It’s a wonder he can even speak the English language as well as he does! I give him credit for that. In fact, he’s a credit to his …”

  “Stop it right there, Aunt Verlie!”

  On the way home, Verlie managed to dig out yet another free-chicken-dinner coupon from the depths of her beloved Vera Bradley purse.

  “Look! I found another one! Now I can take Field out, too. Maybe he’ll appreciate it more than you did. You seem a little wrought up today. I’ll bet you’re constipated … .”

  6

  Twitter Woes: I’ve G
ot Plenty of Characters, Just No Character

  As a Southerner, one of the hardest things I’ve had to do lately is learn how to “tweet.” Because everyone knows that Southerners lean toward being a bit long-winded, verbose, wordy, overwrought, and dense when it comes to written communication. So this means that I’ve had a tough time joining the Twittersphere.

  How is it possible for me, me, to condense what I’ve got to say into 140 lousy characters? For the longest time, I thought it was 140 words, which already cramped my style plenty, but then I noticed that every time I “hauled off and tweeted” (as we say in the South), the cursor wouldn’t budge beyond a couple of short sentences. Characters, it turns out, means letters. Who knew? Everybody did? Oh.

  At first I just couldn’t do it. We Southerners are known for telling long, looping stories stuffed with color and pageantry and pork fat. Twitter had me communicating with friends and family in something just a little more sophisticated than a series of keyboard grunts. I felt as if everything I typed was coming out like Karl in Sling Blade. Mmmm-huh.

  Clearly, I’d just have to adjust. After all, brevity is the soul of wit, said Shakespeare, who, methinks, would’ve sucked loudly at tweeting.

  After the first few weeks I started getting the hang of it. It’s all about self-editing. When I can convey the thought in exactly 140 characters, my day is off to a good start. Writing less seems like cheating.

  I have lots of friends who tweet and most of their tweets are super boring. Some are high-minded, choosing only to tweet about things like (yawn) social justice and (bigger yawn) how precious their kids are. One friend recently posted: Courage is being willing to walk in darkness while shining a light for others to follow.

  That’s beautiful, isn’t it? Compare and contrast with my tweet that day: Just rewatched St. Elmo’s Fire. Can’t believe Demi Moore really thought she could kill herself by leaving the windows up on a cold night.

  My very first tweet ever was equally shallow: A little redneck girl in line behind me at Marshall’s pointed at my ass and said, “Look at the big butt, Meemaw.” My life is complete. I’ve learned to appreciate the way Twitter forces you to choose your words carefully. In that way, it is like haiku, the fine Japanese art of hair weaving in thirteen words, or something like that.