I think I gained a pound today. Oh my God, I’m sure I did. My midriff is distended by at least an inch and my underarms feel all globby. I am so fat.
It all started this morning at our big Delta Phi Lambda fall fundraiser for the National Children’s Cancer Research Fund. We rented out the ballroom of the student center, and Stacey and I spent the whole morning putting up streamers and posters that said, “No More Cancer—Delta Phi Lambda Rocks.”
I wore a Delta Phi Lambda tank and blue running shorts to the fundraiser because I had to help out at the hoop shoot by counting the money Tami collected and by clapping. My shorts were long enough so that they covered my thighs, which is completely my problem area, but they still were pretty short. Well, it turned out to be pretty cold in the ballroom. At first I tried jumping really fast while I cheered, but I ended up putting on an extra-large Champion sweatshirt that I borrowed from Jen. I looked like a complete whale in it.
When it was time for the dance to start, I went over to Erika’s to fix my hair and weigh myself. Thank God, I was a half-pound under, so I put on the sleeveless dress instead of the sleeved one I left in the car to wear if I suddenly started retaining water.
When I got to the dance, I took a deep breath, sucked in my stomach and walked in. A few steps into the door, I almost ran into this stupid automatic wheelchair that was parked right in front of the entrance. I looked around the ballroom, and there were wheelchairs all over, mixed in with all the perfectly dressed Delta Phi Lambdas. Lisa waved from across the room where she was sitting with some little bald kid on her lap.
I went over and asked her what was going on, and she said that the woman from the National Children’s Cancer Research Fund surprised us by bringing some of the kids over for a while. It totally ruined the whole look of the dance. I’d spent hours choosing the perfect color for the tablecloths and napkins so I wouldn’t look stocky when I held them, and now they were just getting slobbered over by drooling, blotchy-skinned kids.
I figured out that I could escape the kids if I looked busy at the refreshment table. I was in the middle of rearranging the petit fours for about the sixth time when tragedy struck—I started to get hungry. I could see that everyone else was way too busy fawning over those stupid cancer kids to monitor the door for ag students, so there was no way I could run out and get my usual: a salad with low-fat ranch dressing, two saltine crackers, a Diet Sprite, and two Certs for dessert. I had no choice but to eat from the hors d’oeuvres table.
I tried picking the cucumbers out of all the ham and cream cheese roll-ups, but someone spotted me re-toothpicking them. I munched on the few sprigs of parsley that decorated the sliced meat tray, but that was hardly enough. Resigned to failure, I ate a napkin-full of cheese and crackers, damning myself the whole time.
I hung out by the hors d’oeuvres table all night, totally crushed by the irony of the whole event. I mean, there it was—my fall fundraiser of my sophomore year, and a bunch of sick kids were stealing the spotlight. And now it’s me who’s got to go in there and step on that scale. God, I just know I gained a pound today. Life is so unfair.
