"Wiggle, don't jiggle."

I heard that when I was sixteen after leaning over to tack a poster to the top of a chalk board.

"You're getting a little fat"

That one was by a boy who simultaneously pinched the skin underneath my chin when I was fifteen.

"You have a stomach butt"

I heard that one after I showed my sisters my after-three-babies tummy.

"When is the baby due?"

Six months after I had Abe, in the temple. I heard Satan cannot have power in the walls of the temple, so I suppose that urge to kill was just me.

And the hits just keep on comin'.

But, I've got to say, stomach butt hurts the worst. I wonder how many plastic surgeons have sisters to thank. I know mine will.

Why is it that I can't remember what the funny thing was that I was laughing about the other day but I can remember distinctly how I felt in seventh grade when I stood up to give a definition on a vocabulary word and five boys started rubbing their desks (to demonstrate what I was as flat as)?

I wonder if someday, when our recollection is perfect, it will also have perfect perspective. That would be a nice feature. I am officially submitting that right now, someone take a note. Because there are whole years of my life I remember with less clarity than the time that I heard a bunch of girls whispering that I was too fat for my jeans. We were in a Wet Seal, and the curtains on the dressing room were purple, and the jeans were Calvin Kleins that I got on clearence, and those girls were supposed to be my friends.

See?

This is not original territory, I know. But it's the least original territory that is usally the most keenly felt, that's why there is still good money in country music.


And I have a way to combat all this negativity. My Dad taught me when I was fifteen. He said;


"They're just intimidated by you, honey"


Yeah. That's right. I was now armed with the ultimate comeback to say in my head, to myself, when alone, usually with cookies. They are all clearly just intimidated.


The more you say that to yourself, the more sense it makes; yeah, that's the ticket, he just had to pinch my chin fat because otherwise he would have been too intimidated to approach me. It all makes sense now. People have to accuse me of jiggling rather than wiggling (which, by the way, is preposterous, since everyone knows that whenever possible I prefer to wiggle and jiggle, you know, you really have to do your best to please both parties, that's just good statesmanship.) because they are intimidated by my presence. My sisters are just intimidated by my stomach butt...wait...

As time has gone on I've ran into a few holes in this logic. For example, has anyone noticed alot of people on reality television say that same thing, kind of a lot? People on reality television that no one is really intimidated by at all, unless as a possible public health hazard? I think that maybe some dads confused pity and intimidation when talking to their kids. Not my Dad, though. He knows. He knows that difference, in words.

Right?