Weight gains

As a kid I dreamt of becoming a crime fighter one day. To be a daring cop When I grew up. The dreaming part was done in all its intensity but I screwed up the growing up part. When I was in my 9th grade, my younger sister was atleast 2 inches taller than me. I over took her only 2 years later. But the growth spurt stopped right there.What ever it took to grow further, I had a short supply of it, by default. I hung from tree branches, drank horlicks, did stretching exercises, dreamt a lot more; but.....the scale froze at 5'6".

The tragedy did't stop there. Soon I found out that my 5' something frame was incapable of putting on weight, no matter how much I ate. I could run my fingers over the mirror reflection of my ribs and still count them accurately.I was a nutritionist's nightmare.

There was no chance of me becoming a cop. They will never have a khaki uniform that will fit me. I might even become the first cop to die of a gun shot recoil.

My best friend Thomas was a big guy for his age. T-shirts always looked good on him while I looked like a coat hanger holding it up while wearing one. I decided to find out what did it take to be like him.

Thomas was aiming a stone carefully at a bunch of ripe mangoes in our neighbour's yard when I presented my first question."Thomas, do I look skinny?"

He took his squinting eyes off the mangoes, looked at me without changing that expression, gave me a look-over and snorted; "You don't look skinny. You ARE skinny".

That answer was not going to help me at all. So I continued in a sterner voice; "Thomas,I want to be fat...like you".

Thomas threw the stone at the mangoes, missed, grunted, looked back at me and said; " I am not fat you lizard, but you are a skeleton and you screwed up my shot!".

I was convinced that Thomas just grew up with out having any clue as to why he is fat and how he could be of some help to someone who was an aspiring fatso. I ate one mango more than Thomas just to irritae him. I ate less for dinner that night.

It was a few more years later that I decided to study karate. I had two objectives behind this venture; 1) gain some respect from the bullies in the high school 2) try and see if I could gain some weight during the process.

The first objective was partially successful; the second was never a possibility; which lead to me to join a gym. I sweated buckets in both the places but never gained a kilo. But soon I found that I had a great effect on people when ever I talked to them, in the Gym.

I couldn't go near the muscled hunks in the Gym. They always pretended that they couldn't see me. One of them would just walk past me, bang his big shoulder into my bony chest, send me flying to a weight rack, look back at me and say "sorry" and would continue to do the same thing th very next day.I hated them.

Then there were the skinny guys just like me and most of the time, slightly better of than me. I saw a smile on their faces and empathy in their eyes. That was the last thing I needed; two skinnies trying to console eachother. There was no positivity in that relationship. I hated them.

Then there the real biggies. The buckets of lard who wore XXL T shirts and formed sweat pools on the Gym floor. I watched them with fascination as they panted, howled, heaved, straining under their own weight. When they took breaks in between, I watched them from the corner of my eyes, like a school kid looking at a beached whale.

I would never forget the day when I talked to one of those guys. He was comepletely gassed out and looked like he could do with some encouragement. I put my hand on his shoulder and said this much; "Look, I was once like you.Just keep going buddy! You can do it. Here, let me show you how to work those glutes".

He was my first fan. I soon started loving going to the Gym because I knew that there would be this group of extra-large extra attentive guys who would listen to every word I uttered and did what I told them to do. Skinny does it at times!