Stories From A Former Life

Wow. The ongoing photo project is really dredging up some stuff, let me tell you. These next photos don't span such a long time; I'd say the earliest was taken in 2001 or 2002 and the latest were taken in 2005.


Dave took this photo of me while we were sitting in a coffee shop near UNM that I used to frequent. It was kind of a crap shop, but it was close to the biology and chemistry buildings (where I was spending a lot of time then). The people at the shop were always friendly enough--but oddly, they became much friendlier when I stopped looking that way, and started looking this way:

Suddenly, I began to get invitations to their little outside-the-coffee shop parties and other little related events. Some of the counter help got a lot friendlier. (Oddly, it was mostly the women who worked there that got friendlier.) That, needless to say, was when I ended my patronage of that particular coffee shop.

Why?

There are certain people who always treated me like a human being whether I weighed four hundred pounds or one hundred and fifty pounds. Those people are still my friends. The rest? Well, jettisoning them was the easiest weight I ever lost.

Here are a couple more comparison photos, again, with a two hundred-plus pound difference.



I really don't see myself in either--or any--of those photos.