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I am going to take a moment from my grief to discuss the “fat hole” on my right thigh. I have had this sucker, I am not kidding you, since the moment puberty hit at the age of about fifteen. (You do the math; I was a late bloomer). I remember, very distinctly, parading around the house in a new two-piece bathing suit when I was about fifteen. My brother, a year younger, was watching television and I happened to stand between him and the set. “Your thighs look like jello.” He announced. “Move out of my way.” This was crushing news for me. I was thinking I was looking fairly grown up in my new suit, and then he came at me with the depressing news that my thighs looked “like jello.” I reminded him about his brutal remarks a few months ago when he was here. “I said that?!” He widened his eyes in shock. “I don’t think so.” “You did.” I replied. “You said ‘jello’.” “Are you sure?” He queried. “Listen.” I answered, “Yes. I have thought about it every time I looked at my thighs since that time.” He seemed sorrowful that a comment passed so quickly from his lips almost thirty years ago could have made such an impact upon me. There was no way for him to understand that for a woman, even a young one, body image can be such a defining force that comments like “jello thighs” can scar one for life. Back when the words “jello thighs” were scorching into my permanent files, I weighed roughly ninety pounds. I will, however, admit that although my weight was light, so was my exercise schedule. To be blunt, I didn’t exercise. Ever. So I am here to tell you that such a nonexistent exercise schedule didn’t exactly tone those bowls of jello into lean strips of meat. Or lean strips of anything. Then one day, I discovered the “fat hole.” It probably wasn’t too long after my brother drew attention to what would become my most loathed body part that I saw it. Right there, nestled in the middle of my big Traynor thigh, was a dent. But not just any dent, oh, no siree Bob, not in MY thigh. It was a crater-eque affair, a dent about the size of a quarter. It might as well have been the size of a softball, because swiftly upon the realization that my thighs were made of jello was the knowledge that there was a big old serving of that jello taken right out of the middle of my right thigh. So, naturally, I looked at my left thigh, dreading the sight of the matching fat hole. Imagine my shock when I realized that the fat hole was a one-sided deal, that not only was it grotesque beyond imagination, but I was mutantly one-sided in my disfiguration. “I am a beast.” I said to the mirror, and then pummeled that fat hole like crazy. I had seen commercials on television where certain products could (and these people didn’t lie) completely disintegrate cellulite. I needed me some of those products, but of course, my budget was limited (nonexistent) so I just tucked that fat hole inside of my bell bottoms and got on with life. I think that somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that my mutant thigh was going to turn “normal” at some point in the future. I know that when I became a regular exerciser, I was certain that I would be bidding that baby ‘bye-bye’ forever. I was arobicizing like Jane Fonda and yet agonizingly for me, inside my baby pink tights (just above my leg warmers) was that old fat hole. Still it lives on, an unwelcome reminder of my genetic legacy, right there on my thigh. No matter how much a bicycle, no matter how much I run, that sucker is not budging. I am cursed, CURSED I tell ya, with a grotesque hole in my thigh. My life events, lately have really caused me to focus inward instead of so much on the externals that have dominated my life ever since that late puberty onset. I have tried to stay more spiritual, to connect with God and to be a better person INSIDE. However, I am sorry to report that every once in a while, when I am at the gym diverting my mental pain with physical, that I will find myself obsessing, still and sadly enough, about that fat hole in my right thigh. I would think that my new giant hole in my heart would be enough to keep me focused, but shallow is as it truly is, I still want that fat hole in my thigh gone.
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