 |
| HOT DOG! It's a hot dog. Well it wasn't quite a steak from Outback Steakhouse, but the chili-dog (pictured above) was eye-openingly delicious. This was by-far the tastiest weenier that I've ever had in my mouth (not that it's had a lot of competition. I don't live THAT close to San Francisco). It's food like this that has turned me from a beautiful butterfly of a boy, into a FATerpillar of a man. |
Just as the tiny, slimy caterpillar evolves into a beautiful
butterfly I too am ever-evolving. In recent years I’ve noticed that marriage
and fatherhood have been the cocoon that has been transforming my body into some
kind of deranged reverse butterfly situation.
That’s
right, as a young, single-man my hard-bodied abs and my lack of a second and
third chin were my striking Technicolor wings that would help me fly from
flower to flower and pollinate all of the baddest looking daisies in the club.
However, although fatherhood and husbandhood have made me emotionally stronger
and happier than I’ve ever been, they have each taken a devastating physical
toll on my body.
In true reverse butterfly fashion I
went from being beautiful and so weightless that I could fly to getting
chubbier, slimier and growing dozens of new itty-bitty legs out of my side
(metaphorically of course, if this were literally happening the it would be
completely impossible to buy me a pair of pants in this upcoming holiday
season. I can see myself getting kicked out of Macy’s for asking for a pair of
pants with 98 extra leg-holes).
After
almost a decade of marriage and a little over half a decade of being a baby daddy, my
body is now much closer to it’s caterpillar stage than to it’s time as a butterfly,
but on the inside I still see myself as a skinny kid.
Now I
know that the camera can add 10 pounds and sometimes the mirror can be
deceiving ,so I’ve only really noticed how fat I’ve been getting through the
eyes of my friends, family, loved ones, etc.
Heck,
even my pieces of modern technology have been getting in on the act. For
example: whenever I use my phone to check my work email, I have to type out www.outlookcom, because that’s our office’s
email service carrier. Being in-and-out of the office as often as I am I
probably have to type-out www.out... three to four times a day. However, now before I can finish the word "outlook" the task bar
scrolls down and asks did you mean www.outbacksteakhouse.com/coupons/throwanothersteakandshrimponthebarbie.com/matekangaro.org
(which as I’m sure you know is the same way that all Australian websites end).
That’s
true, and every single time my task bar suggests that I got to www.outbacksteakhouse.com/coupons/throwanothersteakandshrimponthebarbie.com/matekangaro.org
I do. I definitely love checking out all of the great online deals at my
favorite ethnicity specific steakhouse. If you login to their website often
enough they give you printable coupons for a free-order of their delicious
blooming-onion appetizer. And over the last few years I’ve acquired enough free
orders of the blooming onion to choke a whole family of koalas (which is a ridiculous way for a marsupial to die, because their pouch is a build-in
doggybag… if they’ve had too much blooming onion then they should have just
taken it to go instead of continued digestion leading to a blooming onion
overdose).
What’s
even more insulting is when a living, breathing person calls me a fatty by
using their own mental auto-correct key. I can always tell what a person really
thinks of my weight gain by the way that they react to my food-related
statements.
My
favorite example of this took place a couple of days ago at the office. We were
having a particularly busy day and in order to get all of my work done in a
timely fashion I had to work straight-through my lunch break. At the end of the
day I ran into a long-time work acquaintance who I tend to see when it’s time
to clock-out. While she was making an attempt at small talk she asked me how my
day was.
To
which I replied, “I was busy so busy today that I missed lunch.” And as the conversation carried
on I could tell by her body language that when she heard me say that I’d missed
lunch, that she had interpreted what I said not as being that I missed lunch as
in I didn’t have lunch… but instead she thinks that I'm such a hopelessly
insatiable fat-ass that when I said that I “missed lunch” she thought that I
did eat lunch and that it was such a highlight of my day that I’m now
reminiscing about my lunch.
She
heard my mouth say that I "missed" lunch but she took one glance down at my body
and auto-corrected that statement to say that I "miss" lunch. And that kind of
body language based fat-shaming felt like a big, swift kick into my newly
protruding gut.
Man, I
lost track of where I was going with that… but anyways now I could really go
for some Out-Back Steakhouse. As a matter of fact I could order their Butterfly
shrimp and continue with my Reverse Butterfly Evolution. With a cozy booth
serving as my cocoon I could complete my transformation from beautiful boy
butterfly,, to chunky caterpillar to a new species that is found only I the
Outback it’s called the FATeripillar.
-Le Fin
-or as the Aussies would say, All Done Mate.
 |
| This Blog was brought to you by Charlie Spink and (Unofficially from) Outback Steakhouse |
