You all know me – I’m chubby. I was in good shape in high
school (even though I thought I was fat). In a rather unique move, I gained not one but two
Freshman 15s in college. After graduation I got back in shape. And now I’ve
spent the last five years or so getting back into another shape: round.
Why? Because I like my heroes, I crave pizza and I am
eternally on a hunt for the best burger in the world.
But I am still a normal size human being. I have a 36”
waist, and my ass fits in a normal size seat, as it should. Shocking this isn't the case for most Americans. Even if you don't live in Mississippi.
Yesterday wasn’t a good day for me at work. I was pretty
down so I decided to leave on the early side, right at about 5:30 PM. I got to
Port Authority and felt really lucky because there were no lines. At that time I’m
usually stuck waiting, but I saw that both of my gates were empty. One bus had
pulled away so that left me with only one still at the gate. I figured it was
full, but I ran on there and there were two seats left.
Normally I’d just wait for another one because the only
seats left at that point are usually way in the back, but I felt karma may have
finally been on my side and decided to board.
Mistake.
And the second I got on, the bus pulled away, so I had no
chance to get off.
The very last section of the bus is one row of five seats. I
took one look back there and saw what I was up against: The Wall of Obesity! I
took one look and knew my ride was fucked.
Four people, five seats. No, not really; I take that back.
Four people the size of Civics left no seats. They saw me heading right toward them –
that ‘Oh, shit’ look in their eyes – and they started to scootch-slide over. But
these were real behemoths we’re talking about here, so they left me with
literally about six inches of room to sit.
I tried – I tried to sit comfortably. I made one attempt to
lean back and squish my shoulders in tight so my back could rest against the
seat. Yea, that didn’t happen. So I spent the whole ride with my ass just
dangling off the seat’s edge, sitting upright with my legs at a right angle. It
was like a wrestling workout.
Luckily for me, even in the pouring rain, the ride was as
short as could be. I was off the bus in an hour. The problem was I hurt my back doing
some work on my house on Sunday, so sitting scrunched up like that, for that long, made it tighten up again
and I’m really hurting from it. Just when I was starting to feel better, the
Wall of Obesity struck, and struck hard.
