Blue Childhood

Do you remember getting fat? I do, 5th grade. My 10 year old baseball picture makes me look lean and fast. However, my 11 year old one looks like I spent the year preparing for the role of Humpty Dumpty in the school play. As an athlete this was a big hit to my ego. Besides not being able to run as fast, I didn't look as good in the baseball pants. The summers weren't too bad since most of the girls never came out to the fields, unless they had a brother playing and most of them were not our age. Once I started my 6th grade year, I realize what a pain being fat was going to be. It all started shopping for school jeans. I realized that I had now outgrown boy jeans, but men's jeans were just too long. The only solution Wal-mart had was "Huskey" jeans. Huskeys were for fat boys. They were still too long but not as bad as the adult version. My mom said she could hem them so they would be fine. My mom was able to hem them, but since I was so short she ended up cutting off enough material that I put them on my arms and they made full sleeves. The hem was about where the knee was supposed to be, so I walked around school with tree trunks for legs. The one advantage, was I didn't need to get nice shoes, because you could see them any way. That is the year I discovered the joys of sweat pants. That shortly brought a whole new set of problems, that's for dern sure!