I have four sons. Four healthy sons, praise the good Lord. Four healthy sons that can eat, and eat well. I also eat well although never as much as my hollow legged offspring. My kids take a packed lunch to school every day, 6 days a week. Including snacks (to be eaten or traded). I cook a good balanced supper almost every night. I bake too. We go through a lot of food.
Almost every time I go to the grocery store some wizened old crone has a comment to make to me as I push the overflowing shopping cart towards the cashier. Today’s was “You must be hungry dear, all that food for such a skinny young thing”. I just smiled and pushed on. She followed. She just had to add “Are you bulimic? Because my granddaughter is, and she buys a lot of food and then throws it up”. Now, I can see that this lady was trying to be a concerned citizen, and helpful. This woman doesn’t know me from Eve and cannot possibly know I have kids. But the bulimia comment pissed me off. I am skinny. My family are all slim people. I eat healthily (being married to an RD has many benefits). The assumption ticked me off. I have had anorexia and bulimia comments thrown at me so many times, even had people offer to take me home to feed me – it just lights a fuse under me. She would never have told a fat person she had too much in her shopping cart, that she looks like she needs to lose weight!!
I stopped pushing, took a deep breath and faced her. I told her I was sorry her granddaughter has issues with food. I told her I felt her pain. I thanked her for her concern and told her I was fine. But she continued to look so perplexed and worried, wringing her hands in the middle of the grocery store. I totally did not need to justify anything to her, but I tried for a second to imagine she was the 90 year old grandparent of a dear friend. Would I brush her off so easily then?
I told her that I am a very blessed woman who has four sons, including two teenagers, who eat a lot. She looked at me like I had an eye in the middle of my forehead. Yep. Here was the “you look too young to have such old kids” comment. Followed by the “Did you adopt them? You don’t look like you could possibly have given birth”…seemed that this lady was spouting ALL the lines that get my goat. God give me strength!! I whipped out their photos from my wallet, and spent a minute or two telling her about my kids.
By the end of the conversation she was tearing up. She thanked me for taking the time to speak to her, for not being rude as so many kids of “my generation” are. She wished me luck feeding my troops. And off I went to pay the cashier. This lady was probably so lonely and this had been her way of striking up some kind of conversation. I had been so close to biting her head off, I am so glad I didn’t.
In the Pink 