You'll never catch me wearing a "No Fat Chicks" T-shirt, but you have to understand, I'm a perennial ectomorph who puts on his running shoes and defies heart attack, broken bones and the ridicule from being on the streets of Southern California and not in a car when the slightest bloated feeling has me pinching my waist uncontrollably the day before. Dining companions don't know my appetite's what it is because that was probably my only meal of the day. The 1000-lb. man was always a mystery to me not only because there was never an explanation for the source of the sheer income required to fund his daily diet, but also his failure to stop himself at 250, 300 or five hundred. Even I wake up after hitting snooze for an hour.

Have I told this story already? My father once when I knew his whereabouts told me of an episode in his single life, which, you'll assume with me, must continue: he was seated at a local café when a lady approached and asked to join him. They chatted for a while, about what, I didn't ask, and after a certain amount of it, how much, I also regret I'm curious to know now, he told her, quite abruptly, that he was not interested in large women. Not surprisingly, that would end their time together. Events of an unrelated nature would pass in the months to follow, or was it years, before he received a call one evening; it was her, she had obtained his number and wanted to let him know that in that time, she had put forth the effort and lost some weight. All on account of him, or rather, those words of his. He congratulated her and hung up the phone.