Things to Do to Lose Weight

The first rule of dieting is that if something doesn't have very many calories, you can have as much as you want of it. There's this place in the Diet Watchers' Guide for instance, where the author talks about how when she gets cravings for bad foods, what she'll do is go get a whole can of Chinese vegetables and eat it with mustard sauce on the top. Or there's this recipe for Unlimited Soup: All it's got in it, is things you can eat as much of as you want, like canned tomato juice, and celery, and cabbage, and bouillon cubes. Conceivably, you could eat a whole recipe of that stuff at one sitting, although all I've ever managed is a couple of bowlfuls.

Good Foods and Bad Foods

There is only one rule that decides if a food is good or bad, and that is if you're fat or not. If you're fat, the only good foods are tuna, and grapefruit, and vegetables. If you're not fat, anything you want to eat is good. For instance my sisters are not fat. Mama buys them delicious things like sugared cereals and whole milk. She makes them cookies, and when it's someone's birthday, they always get a slice of the cake. Grandpa Brown visits, and he takes us all out to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Linda and Karen can have whatever they want, but Mama calls after me as we go out of the house, that I'd better watch my diet.

The Food You Eat Because You're Supposed To

I am a good eater.  I’m not picky like my sister.  I like eggs and milk (unlike Robin).  For a while there when I’m very young, I pick all the onions out of my food like she does, but I learn very quickly not to mind having them there.  They’re a little slimy, but they just taste like what they’re cooked with.  I like mushrooms.  I like fish, the broiled kind, as well as the kind fried in cornmeal like Grandma Johnson makes.  I even learn to like oysters, at least the chewy outside-parts (I leave the squishy middles for Mama and Daddy).  

There are just a few things that I really, really don’t like:  I hate lima beans cooked with ham.  Other kinds of beans are good, but lima beans have this weird sharp-taste.  Also they’re big and squishy, and kind of dry-feeling in the middle.  I always have to cover my serving with catsup so I can even eat it.  Then I’m still the last person at the table those nights, because I don’t like catsup very much either.  I don’t like squash.  Mama and Daddy have a deal with us:  You have to eat a vegetable with your dinner, but it can be either salad or the cooked vegetable, you don’t have to eat both.  So most nights when Mama makes squash, I eat the salad instead.  Only sometimes there isn’t any salad.  I eat one piece of squash.  I put it on the tip of my tongue, and I gulp it down like a pill, with lots of milk.  It usually wants to come right back up when I eat it like that, but I don’t let it, because I know I’m just going to have to eat another one if it does.

Linda's Loser Sister

For about five years, I am better at stuff than my little sister. Then Linda starts right out in Kindergarten, getting better at stuff than me. She can already color pictures in better than me before she even starts the First Grade. – How you do it, is you use your crayon to trace an outline around the edge, and then you fill the rest in. I know, because she explains it to me. Only I never care about coloring other peoples' pictures in enough to do it her way. She quickly becomes better at making friends than I am too. We share the same friends when she is in First Grade and we're going to the same school. Then I move to a different school from her the next year, and I start doing nothing but losing friends, while she starts gaining them big-time.

School Pictures

The day when our picture-orders arrive at school, is always a good day. The teacher has all our packets to pass out, and that's time she can't give us work to do. I take out a book and read, keeping one ear open to hear when my name is called. When I get my packet, I open it right away. I sort through the pictures, the little wallet-sized ones for us at home to keep, and the bigger, portrait-sized ones that get sent to my grandparents.