I made my final purchase at Lane Bryant on the last day of 2006, a great way to close out the year. Lane Bryant is the flagship fat girl clothing store in America, stocking sizes 14-28. While I owe them a debt of gratitude for preventing me from wearing the latest in garbage bag couture during my largest days, I always had a love-hate relationship with the store. Their clothes are overpriced and in lieu of day care I suspect they allow employee’s children to run around the store with a bedazzler, applying sequins and plastic beads to every tank top or blouse in sight.

But, they were having a sale on Venezia jeans for only $19.99. I haven’t bought dress pants or skirts from them in a while, but their bootcut jeans have always fit my particular shape well. I stopped by and was happy to find I now fit into their size 16. Funny, since a week earlier I’d tried on size 16′s at their sister store, Fashion Bug, which I could button, but [...]

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One summer in middle school I got a season pass to Kentucky Kingdom amusement park with my friend Kathy. This was before I eventually got too fat to ride the roller coasters and completely lost track of Kathy, who moved a lot because her dad was in the army. For all I know, she could now be married to a German chiropractor and have lil’ babies that greet her every morning with “Guten tag!” before going off to kindergarten.

At the park there was a carnival game that fascinated me. It was the “Guess My Weight” game, positioned right by the human walkway over the highway, thus granting it maximum exposure to passers-by. Standing beside the barker was a scale with a circular face as large as Godzilla’s frisbee. The object of the game was to have the barker guess your weight and if he wasn’t within 5 or 10 pounds (can’t remember which) you’d win a prize.

I never played this game. Obviously. While I could still cram my ass between the safety bars on Thunder [...]

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