300

(warning: long entry)

            I remember once, when I was in the third grade, we’d somehow come across a list of the weight of fat foreigners.  They may have been athletes, or a page from a Weekly World News type of tabloid, featuring obese people around the world.  I don’t remember.  It’s quite possible I never read the page myself.  My brother did.  I just remember laughing heartily and uproariously. The numbers blew my mind.  300 kilograms seemed unimaginable on a person.  It was such an absurd figure.  Later on, I remember that someone, maybe an adult we’d shown this to, maybe my brother himself, suggested that perhaps the weight was in pounds and not kilograms.  So the 300 kg man may be closer to 150 kg.         

            I accepted that information without understanding it.  In those days, I was used to being presented facts I did not read myself or know ahead of time, though that was about to change.  At school, I was both the most popular and smartest kid in my class (that, too, would change).  But at home, I was, as always, the youngest and least well read, who had no basic English skills, no knowledge of Chinese history, and did not know what pounds were.  Or American football (I think some of the fat people were football players).  I just found it hilarious that people could be so big.  I was only about 25 kg then myself.  The idea that someone would be 6 times my size (or 12!) was comically incredible.  The world out there was unimaginably big.

            My third grade year was my last in Taiwan.  So much of my world would change and expand following that year.  I would learn to refer to people as heavy and not fat.  Hungry for everything Chinese in our Massachusetts apartment, I would read every single book in my house, first exhausting mine, than my brother’s books, then moving onto my seminarian parents’ collection, learning along the way, more about marriage counseling and missionary history than any 9-year old should.  Of course, I would also learn what American football is along the way, and lacking English skills, become the opposite of the smartest and most popular kid in my 4^th grade class. 

            But when I think back on the explosive joy I had in learning of 300 pound people, and contrast that with the dull knowledge of pound, feet, and Fahrenheit conversions that came in the New England years afterward, I don’t begrudge growing up.  Nor the fading aura of awe that used to surround my parents and my brother whenever I lifted my eyes toward them.   I’m a big kid, now.  This comes with growing up.  But when I marvel at the size of 300 pound linemen and consider how much more of me there could be, it’s still an incredible thought.