Regrettably, my shower faces the mirror. Recently, when I sidled out, all moist and scrubbed pink, I caught sight of my profile. Horrific.
My stomach was like that guy’s just before the “Alien” bursts free.
That couldn’t really be me. A belly that prominent, that protuberant, couldn’t really be mine. True, I’ve gained weight as I aged, but I’m simply more solid. More muscular. At worst, portlier.
I looked like a pregnant heifer. For those unfamiliar with Nebraska cattle, that’s not comforting.
Surely, the mirror was cursed. Its function skewed, perhaps by some aberration of quantum physics. My belt size hadn’t changed. OK, it had slid downward until it finally couldn’t be seen.
Then reality struck. It actually was me. It was my flesh and blood, my fat. My bulging waist, as such, now made me eligible for sumo wrestling.
As for many of us, self-image had deluded. That attractive fellow was now badly rotund.
As American writer Margaret Halsey once noted, “He must have had a beautiful build before his stomach went in for a career of its own.”
