It finally happened. I’m perfect!! At least that’s what my scale said this morning, proudly announcing to me: 130 pounds. That’s it! I made it! I’m finally perfect…
I haven’t weighed 130 pounds since I was in high school a bunch of years ago, back when I weighed, um, 130 pounds. In high school, though, I definitely wasn’t perfect. I wanted to weigh 125 pounds. Now that would be perfect, or so I thought then.
“Perfect” to me way back in the horror days (as I like to think of them), would have meant being 125 pounds, a cheerleader, and, of course, having a boyfriend and a car. I was a cheerleader for one year, but I never had a boyfriend or a car. I wouldn’t have my own car until I went to college and my Mom and step-dad, Niels, generously gave me their old one. It was a little red Ford Escort. Eventually, I would blow it up and ruin the engine because I didn’t know that changing the oil was a thing. Like going behind the line of scrimmage more than once in football (I didn’t know that was a thing, either, until I learned that you have to do that “behind the line of scrimmage” thing, what with that’s how you play the game and all), I didn’t know that changing the oil was a regular requirement of general car maintenance. I never saw my parents do it. It was just something that happened when they went to Reno, an hour away, and they never talked about oil changes. Then, when I went to college, they generously gave me the car, I drove the hell out of it, and within a year it died, of course, since I had never changed the oil in all the time I owned it. In other words, I killed my car. Definitely not perfect. Then again, neither is a Ford Escort.
In other words, I killed my car.
There are so many ways I tried to be “perfect” throughout my life, a sad, painful thing I tried up until the point I learned that a. I couldn’t do it and b. striving for perfection is called an “emotional fallacy,” something I learned in my interpersonal class at Sac State. Later, I would accept that not only is perfection impossible, I would always do it wrong anyway (whatever the “it” was). I know this because, and God love ‘em, my parents often told me contradictory things about doing things the right/wrong way. Examples: cooking spicy beans as per a recipe that can’t really be messed up (one can beans, one can tomato sauce), my Mom walked by and told me, “too much sauce.” It was not long before Niels walked by and said, “not enough sauce.” Another time, when my Mom was the hospital, she asked me to rub her legs, so I did. She said, “harder.” Niels walked by and said, “not so hard.” I kid you not. So, as you can see, perfect was definitely not in my realm of possibilities, and it was definitely not in my repertoire of life.
In high school, I tried out for the cheerleading team, and by some miracle of God, as well as the fact that our entire school only had 400 people, I made it! I was astounded! Even though I wasn’t perfect, even though I was a fat-ass 130 pounder, I had still made the squad! (That was my masochistic self-hating voice, by the way). I was a cheerleader! However, I never moved up the ranks to head cheerleader, like my older sister had a few years before. Of course, she had been catapulted to the top of the cheerleader pyramid, so to speak. She was perfect. She was a tall, green-eyed brunette. She had beautiful, perfect brown hair. Mine was that ugly blonde stuff, you know, that color that nobody wants, right? (Blonde is spelled with an e for the feminine, by the way, and blond is e-less in the masculine, in case you like to learn those kinds of things. Free juicy tidbits from your favorite—though imperfect–blogger.) So yeah, my perfect older sister was a green-eyed brunette, and I was only a pathetic blue-eyed blonde. I was hideous, of course, because I weighed 130 pounds. I’m sure she weighed less, probably the perfect, the magnificent, elusive 125.
As I’ve grown older (at least I’ll always be younger than my older sister, in a culture that forever worships the young), I can finally appreciate who I am. I know I can still be very hard on myself, of course, but I no longer have the self-hate I had during the self-hate period of horror school. Many years after graduating, I ran into a woman who had been a few grades below me, and we talked about what it was like to be in high school. I confessed to her that I had absolutely hated it, because I had felt like I was weird and short and fat and on and on. She seemed stunned, flabbergasted, in fact. “But you were a cheerleader!” she exclaimed, as if to be a cheerleader meant I was at the pinnacle of it all, the popular, amazing one.
It was so disappointing to her, like learning that Eric Clapton is a proud racist. (I learned that a few days ago.) She couldn’t believe it. She listed all my achievements, like Honor Roll, band, choir. (Nerdy though, right?) and she was astounded that I hadn’t simply adored my super popular, cool kid status. I confess my internal emotional response on hearing how she saw it was complicated. On the one hand, I was pleased to find my popularity–something I didn’t know existed–had been there along. (In her mind, popularity was automatic for cheerleaders, of course.) My self-hate self was never justified, because I really was seen, at least by her and others as one of the popular ones who had “made it.” On the other hand, I was sad for all the pain that I had felt about not fitting in, not being one of the in crowd. (As I said, I was weird, even though I know now that I was not fat or short). Cognitive dissonance for me. It was amusing to hear how emphatic she was. She insisted that I had been popular, successful, and even admired (at least by students in the lower grades). I’m sure that, if what she said was even a little bit true, those younger students must not have known that I weighed a whopping 130 pounds and not the perfect 125. Wow! I’d actually been perfect all along!