threats meant nothing to me. In fact, they taught me a wonderful lesson: Gaining weight makes the parents unhappy.
So screw you, Mom and Dad. I’m eating a box of Twinkies.
I was making daily trips to the grocery store just a couple of blocks from our house. I would come home with a full bag and immediately take it to my room. If Mom or Dad happened to be around, I would have to be careful to hide the food from them. This meant being stealth-like about the trash as well; I couldn’t risk them discovering any empty junk food packaging. Luckily I was in charge of all the household chores.
High School Gregg’s Typical Daily Binge
1 large pack of Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies
1 large pack of Chocolate Chip Cookies
6 cans of Snack Pack Chocolate Pudding
8 Hot Dogs (eaten raw or cooked)
8 slices of American Cheese
Ketchup, Mustard, Miracle Whip
1 gallon of Chocolate Ice Cream
6-pack of Coca-Cola
I was no longer stealing money to fund my habits. Instead, I was earning it by baby-sitting. I became quite good at it, and soon discovered that other families kept delicious foods in their houses all the time. I couldn’t believe that families I baby-sat for put up with how much snacking I would do while watching their children.
I would wait for the kids to go to bed before I began my binge. By the time the parents came home, I’d be so stuffed that it was all I could do to not to buckle over in pain. And yet they had me back, time and time again.
Whenever I was too “hungry” to wait for the kids to go to bed, I would tell them we were going to play hide-and-seek. They would hide somewhere inside the apartment or house while I counted to 100 in the kitchen. While they scurried off, I’d begin stuffing myself with whatever food I could find. After a while, the kids would call out to me “Are you at 100 yet?”
“Not yet,” I’d yell from the kitchen while chewing, as I continued to stuff my face.
There were families who, after a while, did stop calling for my baby-sitting services, as I was literally eating them out of house and home.
Soon I weighed over 275 pounds. My mom was miserable about my weight and embarrassed to be seen with me in public, which, lucky for her, was seldom.
I made my best attempts at preserving what little bit of self-esteem I had left. When getting dressed for school, I would ask Lori if I looked “FFAFK” (Foxy for a Fat Kid). I don’t remember how that phrase came to be. I knew it was silly, especially given the old school use of “foxy,” but my intent was earnest. I knew I was fat and that I couldn’t wear the same kinds of clothes other kids did, but I still wanted to look my best.
“So, Lori, do I look foxy for a fat kid?”
“Yes,” she’d always respond. Lori was one of my biggest fans.
Starting high school was scary. Ours was a big school with lots of students I didn’t know. To make matters worse, I was a freshman, the lowest of the low within the armed forces high school system.
In one of my first classes, the teacher had us sit in a circle and share our future career goals with each other. Everyone took turns explaining how they wanted to be a doctor, architect, businessman—you name it.
When it was my turn, I leaned forward and proudly told the class I wanted to be a movie star—not an actor or someone working in show business, but a movie star.
The kids erupted into laughter and one remarked, “Forget star . . . he’ll be a planet.” I had a difficult time remaining in that circle of students for twenty more minutes. The worst part was that the teacher didn’t jump to my defense. But in hindsight, it probably wouldn’t have helped.
I was forced to face facts. I was fat and unpopular.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ATTRACTION
I knew I had to do something. I decided to parlay some of my baby-sitting riches into a home movie camera. I bought a cheap version, because I still wanted to have money left over to keep me in my grocery supplies.
What was I going to do with my new camera? Why, become the next Steven Spielberg, of course. I hatched a master plan. I was going to make a movie and cast the high school’s most popular kids in all the roles. This would be my opportunity to click in. And guess what? It worked. It seems that if you cast a few star football players and their cheerleader girlfriends in your cinematic opus, you suddenly acquire a little respect. It didn’t matter that these popular types weren’t really my friends. The fact that I was getting face time with them meant something to my other classmates—especially to those who seemed repelled by me because of my excess weight.
My cinematic masterpieces were never truly recognized for their greatness. The subject matters? A twenty-minute feature documenting the lives of Charlie’s Angels when they were still in high school, complete with their first crime to solve and a short movie about the exploits of Tabitha, the daughter from Bewitched, in high school. What can I say? I was a child obsessed with reruns.
I made several more movies over the next couple of years. Including a space adventure with the oh-so-original title of The Third Encounter, and a disco version of The Wizard of Oz titled Discoz. Since I lived in Germany, I had no idea that the similarly themed The Wiz already existed. I promise there’s no need for a copyright infringement suit.
I cast my sister in several roles, as I always wanted her around me. We had lots of fun making movies. I would spend days editing them and then created musical soundtracks.
Neither my mom nor dad ever wanted to watch my celluloid creations. Whenever I announced that I wanted to be a filmmaker I would get in trouble. I guess they never saw me reaching such lofty goals and so didn’t want to encourage them.
But it was thanks to the movie-making that I started developing some self-confidence—all despite my girth and shyness. My increasing popularity was further aided by my continued theater arts work. On stage I was boisterous, funny, and blessed with what I was told was an incredible tenor singing voice. Here was this huge kid with a “lovely” singing voice.
Opera, anyone?
Throughout high school, Lori never had a problem with her weight. But she did get the bad acne inherited from my father’s gene pool. And while the wide-spanning ears I had as a toddler went “back” on their own, Lori’s wide-spanning ears eventually had to be surgically pinned back.
About the same time that Lori got surgery to have her ears pinned back, my mom got her nose done for “medical reasons.” She was continuing her morph into a hip, single chick who had all the guys crooning and swooning—or so she thought.
My mother could’ve given Cruella de Vil a lesson in depravity, but I had been brainwashed by her to see my dad as the reason we didn’t have a normal childhood—I had been trained to see him as the enemy. I thought he was the reason for all the turmoil at home. Mom never hesitated to remind me that Dad was a drunk who was ruining his career and our family’s reputation.
I didn’t want to admit that my mom was getting quite a reputation of her own. Every now and then I would hear other kids in high school make comments; kids who had overheard their parents talking. Apparently my mother was the biggest flirt at the hospital. And her act was working with most men, especially the married ones.
Often she would stay away from home for days at a time, which was fine by Lori and me. Other times, she would call in the middle of the night to make an announcement.
I’d