You know...

I thought that I was putting on weight — and I was and did! — but it turned out to be edema associated with congestive heart failure! Today, I’m a skinny-old-man with giant bones and I look like a bizarre storefront window mannequin dressed in clothing that just seems to hang loosely. Crap, even my skin hangs loose. Not exactly what The Girls Want.

Now.

My Medicaid case manager really is overweight — not morbidly so! — and I think of her as one of the most attractive women I’ve known. We yell at one another when discussing politics (funny — she hung a new, gigantic Che Guevara poster for me last week; had she known Che’s politics she would never have gone near the poster!) and we flirt with abandon. We’re very physically close, too. We love one another in a respectful, but wholly unprofessional, way.

I have often cried when thinking of how far she goes to be kind.

As I’m in the elderly population, now, I realize that even in my misspent youth when collecting the ‘pretty girls’ I was as much (if not more) attracted by personality than bodacious good looks.

Unless weight gain drives others to the point of being a health problem, I give a great big ‘meh’ to extra padding.

Stuff-it.