Ho! What Fools These Fardels Be!

This guy comes in and says to me, “What’s your goal here? What’s the big idea?” He was a huge man, seriously overweight and clearly laboring to balance there before me at the counter. Moist, wheezing, one of these characters who’s always swiping at his forehead with a handkerchief, and something of a throwback, I suppose, in this regard.

I took a quick glance at his shoes. Perhaps, actually, a glance is always quick, but I’ve made a long study of the shoes of huge men, and I’ve noticed that they’re always strangely worn. This particular fellow had worn down a good half-inch on the inside sole of each of his shoes. The man was possibly pigeon-toed, I thought, or perhaps the damage to his footwear was simply the inevitable result of bearing the weight of such a resolute human glacier.

I knew instantly that I didn’t like the tone of this fellow’s voice, and frankly wasn’t much interested in whatever it was that he might have to say. I didn’t like the cut of his jib. There was a compensatory rudeness that one often finds in the very unhappy or the excessively overweight. I am well aware, believe me, of the bigotry implicit in my attitudes toward the very large, and it is people like this character who are largely responsible for it. It seemed like I was always having to deal with them.

The man swung one of his big arms up on the counter. It sounded like someone had dropped a fat, metropolitan phonebook. He commenced to drumming with his thumb, in the process blowing a wet wheeze in my direction, a wheeze that carried with it across the counter the stale smell of what I thought might have been chocolate milk. I noticed with a combination of fascination and disgust the film of sweat his arm had deposited on the counter top.

He began to reiterate. Guys like this, I’ve learned, are masters at reiteration, generally of the inexplicable.

“I would just like for someone to explain to me what it is you people think you’re trying to accomplish here,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“I’m sorry” I said. “But you’re asking entirely too much.”