It was a tight squeeze to fit that first WW meeting into the schedule, but I did it. I swallowed all of the [pride/anxiety/fear/worry/disbelief] that I had, and went to the meeting. One thing about the meeting here is that you have to park in the lot of the Bally Gym2 to get there. It’s like a double guilt trip whammy, even though I don’t belong to Bally’s.
I have attended 2 meetings in that building before and each time I happened on the same leader. I really liked this leader. She combines a lot of psychobable and new age mumbo jumbo into her cliches and something about the mix of all that ridiculousness and her no-nonsense self-effacement made me feel at ease. I don’t know when she does meetings at this point, but I’d sure like to find out.
What I wasn’t expecting was that the woman who ran my very first meeting ever (at a building 10 miles away) would be at the helm — Erica, a white trashy, mulleted butch with a no-nonsense, smoker’s voice. Erica was cranky as ever as she smacked us down, took our money, explained to the poor little babies about the different payment plans, and herded us through the sign-up and weigh-in process.
Although that first meeting was nearly 2 years ago now, when Erica looked up and saw me, she said, “Hey, I know you. You’re a returning member.”3 To be clear: I maybe attended 3 of Erica’s meetings in my entire life. Over 2 years ago. Holy cow.
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I started at your meetings in Westchester.”
“Mmph,” Erica grunted, tearing and stamping and stapling my registration packet. “Welcome back.”
Then I weighed in at 326.8 pounds. Here we go.
- I often sketch when I am sitting around waiting for things to start — things like meetings, let’s say. This little scene caught my eye because it is so typical Weight Watchers. “Welcome! Turn off your damn phone! Buy a recycled recipe book! Make a nametag, losers!” [↩]
- Bally Total Fitness, which apparently is not pronounced “Bally’s” as I’ve always thought! [↩]
- This is something that happens to me regularly. I have one of those “faces” that people remember. I put “faces” in quotations because I think what actually imprints on their brains is the entire, monstrous, amazonian mass that is me. I think it is the pretty face on a big body and the cascade of pity thoughts that follow from me being so fat, so tall, and so cute. (What a waste of that face.) Maybe it’s weird to write that, but there you go. I think I’m cute, if fat. [↩]