Someone was telling me the other day that she thought she was fat. I disagreed with her. If I had never seen her before, and saw her walking down the street for the very first time, it would not cross my mind that this lady is fat.
But that is neither here nor there for what I have to say in this article. You can check your weight, and throw in considerations like your age and height and body type but the ultimate proof to tell if you are fat or not is if you have ever broken any chairs by sitting in them.
Now if this friend was to confide in me that she has in fact broken chairs by sitting in them then I would stand corrected. I would accept this scientific proof that she is fat.
I have broken chairs on many occasions. Most recently? Yesterday. It really ticked me off because I received a patio set for a retirement gift, and I was using one of the chairs at my workbench while working on my laptop. Of course I was leaning forward a bit too much in the chair and I felt it wobbling from side to side. I took it apart and found out that I had damaged the steel shaft and the chair is really unstable now.
My first recollection of breaking a chair was at a family picnic in Caledonia, Ontario. These cousins of my wife had a property that backed downhill to the Grand River. The lawn chair I sat in was on a grade and not on level ground. When I sat down I could feel the chair bend out of shape and ceremonially dumped me on the ground.
I thought back to other times that I have broken a chair. We have a friend in Williamsville, NY who has a beautiful small home that is full of the most wonderful antiques. We were invited to her home for a summer party and her back yard was just beautiful. There is a small barn and lovely gardens and around the parameter of her yard she had set up these tiny antique lawn chairs. I planted myself down and heard the tell tale crack and I knew I had done it again.
My wife and I attended a fundraiser for a pastor friend of ours who was moving to Scarboro, Ontario to work at a street ministry with youth. During a very dramatic time of testimony from a young man who had been delivered from street violence and crack and all that other bad stuff I could feel my entirely plastic chair start to shift under my weight. The legs on this chair bent outwards and the seat snapped off and I was dumped, with a very loud noise, on my fat posterior. People in this crowded hall stood up to see what was wrong. Maybe they thought someone was having a heart attack or something. I thought if God could only open up the ground and swallow me whole then I would be quite satisfied.
Oh, I almost forgot. Not even car seats are safe from my bulkiness. I was driving down the road in a Nissan Sentra and stretched out a bit while yawning and my bucket seat broke. It’s a dangerous thing to be driving down the highway and not have any back support.
So for anyone reading this who thinks they are fat – forget what the doctors and your peers or society might say. If you haven’t broken any chairs, you’re not fat. At least, not in my books.
