While working to a very high personal standard in publishing field - typesetting and editing and bookmaking - I found myself dealt out of meetings and long lunches and other venues where social standards favor long legs and vapid smiles. By the time I hit a publishing company where looks mattered more than production, I weighed 400# and was pleased to be hired by anyone at all. I worked under mindless folks who anticipated climbing the ladder that I worked underneath as they breezed by me with their talk of what cereals they mixed for breakfast and other nonsense. It was different when I was working and weighed under 200#, but I thought then that I was recognized for high production and for singular competence. Not so, apparently, for all that went away as the weight crept on and I got pushed from job to job, moving along with the certainty that I'd get hired for just showing up.

I did get hired. As time went by, I was hired by folks who had no idea how to accomplish the work that I do easily and then watch someone mess up as they put their initials on it and make some adjustment that throws the entire thing out of whack. Do they notice? Naw. Once had a math author call me in a fit of rage, as he saw that my "superior" (long legs, long lunches with a visiting author, empty head, officed right next to the big boss) had converted a lot of his math equation parentheses according to the rules of English grammar that convert some parens to the square brackets. That's not a math thing. By the time the author had finished fuming at me on the phone, I'd convinced him that I was not in charge of Ms.LongLegs and that I could not fix anything she had doodled on, messing up a manuscript he and I had worked on for months. I gave him the ph# of the Big Boss, the one who could fix what Ms.LongLegs had done. Boy, did I get fried! The BigBoss wanted to know what in the world the author was upset about. I told him. Never heard a word. Far as I could tell, the book went on sale with nonsense for equations. See, the BigBoss believed that only a book that hit the market could affect sales. A book being fixed was not for sale and could not make money. MsLongLegs? She survived and was eventually in charge of sorting me out, letting me go. Since she never knew what she did wrong, how could she know what I did right? Oh, I could go on...oh, I already did?

Well, as I find my way in this LC life, I wonder what sort of a person I'd be if my legs had not turned into stumps that no one wants to gaze at. I'd probably be promoted and still think that it was in appreciation for my hard work. ha ha ha

Being obese has allowed me to see the seamy side of life. I hope I remember always what it feels like to be treated like a cow just because I have a bovine body. My mind is not bovine, but who cares? Even people who take time to know me, to read what I write, consider that I'm dull-witted enough to fail to keep myself in shape to control a gofer who hands me a paycheck and drives me around and otherwise serves me. Well, maybe I am a nitwit.

But I know what I know. And someday I may have firm thighs and washboard abs - and my own pride in how I've managed life. May have? Well, I will have all that, if I can keep myself aware of WHY I GOT OBESE IN THE FIRST PLACE. I think this is a good question for anyone to ask of themself. This is the 397th post in a thread that seems to have value for those who have read it and given some thought to the question. I rest my case. Whew!