When I was an adolescent I was very slender. When I had to register for the draft—I think that was age 18—the weight that got put on my draft card was 127 pounds--at a height of about 5'10".
Maybe I was very thin even before my adolescence, because I remember that as a child I didn't seem to want to eat, and my parents pretty much had to cajole me into eating—"Take a bite for Grandma" or one for Uncle Willy; "eat this Brussels sprout named Agamemnon" (yes, really).
One of my older female relatives called me a lange luksh—Yiddish for "long noodle." My grandmother once said that she only wished that she would live to see me gain weight (I don't think she did).
My high school Biology teacher predicted that I would never be heavy because, as he put it, I don't have the frame to hang fat on.
Well, right now—pushing the age of 70—I'm hardly obese but I'm not really slim, either. Depending on what figures are taken for my height and weight, my BMI (body-mass index) is right at the edge of the overweight zone. I have gained about 50 pounds in 50 years—maybe a better record than many, in this age of epidemic obesity, but certainly taking me far from the skinny category.
Still, I am small-boned, and I hope that, since people of a certain age seem to tend to be very thin, I may yet again be slim, even as I once was.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
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