That Darn Little "s"

So, why are we here?

Recently, I took my girls and visited my family out in New Jersey. We ordered-in Chinese one night. I had Boneless Spare Ribs with a side of Pork Fried Rice. In other words, pork, pork, more pork and fried stuff. Now, if you add pork to anything, I’m in, but that’s not the part of the meal I want to discuss. Rather, I want to talk about the greatest of all Chinese food traditions (yes, even better than MSG!!): the Fortune Cookie.

Normally, the Fortune Cookie is a rather innocuous part of the classic Americanized Chinese meal. You get a nice piece of origami made of sugar. You chuckle off the fact that “A great fortune will soon come your way,” or that “People respond to your kind and giving nature,” and let the food coma sink in. That’s the end of it, really. You're not supposed to think about it ever again...ever, ever again.

But, oh no! On this day, my old friend, the Fortune Cookie, so loyal and so comforting all these years, decided to betray me. Instead of providing hollow promises of riches-to-come or placating me with empty platitudes, it had to talk about “maturity.”

“Maturity is the acceptance of imperfections,” it read.

Thanks, Fortune Cookie, way to get all serious on me. If I wanted reality, I’d turn on an episode of “The Real Housewives of New York.” That’s reality, right? What next? It’s going to tell me to “Brush and floss after every meal” or “Always say please and thank you.”

The message from my newest “frenemy” stuck in my craw. For the next few days, I could not figure out why the fortune’s little message bothered me so much. After all, the recent Mega Millions drawing had already demonstrated that my lucky numbers were NOT, in fact, 32, 26, 43, 45, 17 and 8. So, the Fortune Cookie’s credibility had been destroyed. Why should I still be caught in its message?

Then, it hit me. It was that “s.” That darn little “s.” If the message had told me that “Maturity was the acceptance of imperfection,” I would have accepted it without question. Of course, nobody is perfect. I can see that. But that darn little “s.” I understand that the author either (1) didn’t think about what pluralizing “imperfection” meant, or (2) was just trying to make middle-aged people feel better about their wrinkles and gray hairs. Perhaps, the company that makes these cookies is part of a global conglomerate which also makes Oil of Olay. Come to think of it, my tongue has never had such a youthful glow. Either way, it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. That’s because that little “s” made me think of another word that starts with “s”: Settling. It made me think that we were being told not just to accept the state of not being perfect, but rather, to accept everything that is wrong, that is not perfect, with ourselves. To settle and accept even those things which we didn’t like but could change about ourselves. I didn’t like that one bit.

But for that “s,” that darn little “s,” there would have been no nagging sensation in the back of my mind, no inexplicable tugging at my conscience, and no incoherent rambling for you to look upon, dear reader. It made me think about the thing which I could have changed about myself for over a decade, but didn’t: My weight.

I’ll address the history of my weight later, but to sum up, I’ve been a pretty big dude for about 12 years now, since freshman year of college. So, I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve decided to not settle and accept the fact that I am just fat and that’s the end of it. I need to be better for myself, my wife and my girls.

So that’s where we are, readers. This is the journey we begin, and it promises to be a long, difficult but hopefully entertaining one. I will always be looking for help, tips, encouragement and someone to keep me in line. So, please chime in and share anytime you feel like it. Thanks for being here.

Tomorrow: The First Weigh-In…Ugh.