Kim Brittingham's Open Salon Blog

Party in the Art Room Closet

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:10:39 -0400

When I was in junior high school, I had an art teacher named Mr. Loften. I was thinking about him yesterday and marveling at just how cool this guy was.

What got me reminiscing was a writing exercise. I'm taking a class at Gotham Writer's Workshop, and yesterday our instructor asked us to "remember a place from your childhood that was special to you, and write a description of it."

My fellow students opened their notebooks and immediately began scribbling, but it took me a while to get started. A special place from childhood? We moved so frequently when I was a kid, all over the country. I learned early on not to get too attached to things, not to let places be "special", when you'd only have to leave them again. My attachment was to my books, and to the stories I created in my head. Those were my special places -- portable places.

Still, I wanted to challenge myself to meet the exercise. I groped backwards in my mind from one address to another, my memory flitting like a porous stone skimmed across the surface of a pond, barely touching down before bounding away again.

And then I remembered Mr. Loften's closet.

You know, sometimes I think back to gutsy things I did and I can't believe that was me with all that nerve. Like when I went to high school in Long Island, and I used to play hooky by renting a limousine to take me into Manhattan for the day. I earned the money working at Ponderosa Steakhouse. I did it over and over again. I never got caught. I'd have the driver wait for me while I disappeared into museums and Bloomingdale's. And as an adult, I tried finally to confess all to my mother. She didn't believe me.

I was fifteen years old. I was pulling off a Ferris Bueller before there was a Ferris Bueller.

Where did I get the nerve? Because I'll tell you something -- I was no Ferris Bueller.

And maybe more importantly -- how can I channel that nerve today? Every day?

But back to that typical junior high school in Tennessee, where I was no more self-confident or popular than I would later be in high school. However, I did cultivate a small circle of friends in junior high. My family stayed longer in Tennessee than in any other state -- twice as long. I was lulled me into a sense of relaxation and belonging, and I dared to become attached to people, and to the place.

My special place within that place was Mr. Loften's art room closet.

Mr. Loften was a tall man whose hair was disappearing from the top of his head, but continued to grow thick and black at the sides. Thinking back, he reminds me of a famous portrait of Edgar Alan Poe I've seen dozens of times since. He wore a long white lab coat for a smock, usually open at the front and largely defeating its purpose. He wore thick, gnarly fishermen's sweaters underneath.

I can't believe a shy kid like me had the guts to ask a grown man, and a teacher, no less:

"Can we hang out inside your closet at lunchtime?"

Who was "we"?

- my best buddy Simone Shanker, a strangely macabre child with long black hair, alabaster skin, a high rounded forehead, and what my little brother referred to as "upside-down eyes". "Noooo, they're Bette Davis eyes," my mother would kindly correct him. Simone looked just like Carolyn Jones in The Addams Family TV series, and the popular girls would snap their fingers when she walked by and sing "duh-duh-duh-duh (snap, snap), duh-duh-duh-DUH! (Snap, snap.)"

- Amelia Johnson, a tiny, lovely buttercup of a biracial girl who'd been cast out of top society for being difficult to define and wearing clothes from K-mart. She spoke softly, her skin was a soft shade of mocha, and her baby-fine afro framed her head like the softest halo.

- Dani Moore, a tough little trailer park Peppermint Patty with freckles galore, a crusty nose and a favorite pair of boy's overalls.

At lunchtime, there weren't too many places you were permitted to be, and I'm quite sure that was done of purpose. You were either in the cafeteria, in the adjacent teacher-monitored restrooms, or milling around in the small fenced pen of dead grass outside.

I guess none of those options appealed to my 12-year-old cosmopolitan sensibilities.

"Please?" I begged Mr. Loften. "We won't hurt anything. I promise. You know us. We're the good kids. Instead of going to the cafeteria at lunchtime, we'll just come here. To your closet."

"My closet?" repeated Loften. Not so much in disbelief -- more like seeking clarification.

Mr. Loften had a huge classroom, a long, open studio with rows of 1950s wooden work tables whose plain, battered legs bellowed in protest when pushed across the glossy speckled floor. One long wall was lined with a countertop with multiple sinks and cabinets above and below. Student artwork was displayed everywhere. A "diver down" flag hung high above the chalkboard. On one end of the room there was a single entrance from the hallway. On the opposite end, a storage closet.

And here's how I described that closet for yesterday's writing class exercise:

It was a tall box, a small footprint with a soaring height. An unstained scaffold of shelving lined two cinderblock walls, crowded with jumbo plastic jars of paint, sweet and sour; stacks of colored construction paper, flannel-like against the palm; spattered coffee cans rattling with brushes of every width. There was a window in the closet, licking yellow sunlight down the center of the space. It was warm and close in spring, and cool and close in winter. Its door was heavy and trustworthy -- the room kept our secrets. Ever utterance tucked itself between pads of newsprint, every dream or confession or pop song sung off-key found its place to curl up between tins of turpentine and hand soap. Little slipped under the slender gap between the floor and the door. Only a prim lip of fluorescent light from the outside in.

We must've walked into the closet during art class one day, stayed a while, and decided we liked it. That's all I can figure. And I don't remember, but I can imagine being the ringleader who said, "Hey you guys! Wouldn't this make a great clubhouse?"

And it became one. Because Loften took a moment to consider my request, rapidly stroking his giant palm with a sudsy paintbrush, painting his hand grayish-purple with its excess, and said:

"OK."

He said yes to our plan.

He said yes.

That's right, all you Lacoste-wearing zombies with your bland country club agendas and upturned noses! You melamine-tray-carrying hillbilly bully suckers with your faces turned lamely towards the light of an open door to a grassless nowhere! We've got a place of our own now, and it's hipper than a Lower East Side junior studio -- and twice. as. big.

Loften said yes. He said yes to three pre-teen girls disappearing behind a smooth blond door with gap-toothed grins and cans of Hi-C. He said yes to muffled giggles and guffaws, and AM radio sing-alongs.

One day during a particularly lustful rendition of the theme from The Greatest American Hero, the door swung open and a thirty-foot-tall eighth grader stood peering down on us.

"Mr. Loften!" she shouted. "There are seventh graders in your closet!"

Beyond her, an eighth grade art class was in full, messy swing. We'd always known they were out there -- we just never cared.

"I heard them!" she said. Other eighth graders began to look lazily over their shoulders. "I heard singing in here. There are kids singing in your closet, Mr. Loften!"

Another big kid, then an even bigger kid fell in behind her and squinted into the closet.

A girl with an intimidating head of white-blond, shampoo-commercial hair demanded of us, in a voice thick with the disgust of a well-tanned housewife encountering a stink bug in her kitchen, "Why are you guys singing, in a closet?"

Mr. Loften and his billowy white smock hustled up behind the growing crowd of glinting orthodontic sneers and stretched out his arms as though conducting an orchestra, or gathering wayward chickens. "Back to work everybody, back to work. Come on."

"But Mr. Loften, these seventh graders are..."

"I know, I know," he said quickly, herding the polo shirts back to their places. "Never mind them. This is class time and you all have a project due."

He leaned into the door and shut us back in again.

How cool was Mr. Loften?

Yeah, we sang sometimes. But never that loudly again.

Mostly, we talked about the lives we wanted to live when we were grown-up. Writer's lives, in New York City. Well, that was Simone and me, anyway -- Dani lived for the day and any opportunity to go barefoot, and Amelia had some lavender crepe-de-chine, Disney-princess vision of getting married someday, and nothing more beyond that. I did not relate.

And Simone made up scary stories that held our unblinking attention. And sometimes we acted out spontaneous skits based on the Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari sitcom Bosom Buddies. We cast ourselves as Kip and Henry's neighbors. The closet was our hip New York apartment. Sometimes we argued over who would date Kip and who would date Henry. I was predictable. I always wanted Henry.

That closet was a special place, and Mr. Loften was a special guy. He took a chance. He let us be. He gave our creativity room. I wonder if he ever snuck over and leaned in close to eavesdrop. I wonder if he ever chuckled at what he heard. I'll bet he smiled at least. Smiled before spinning back around and announcing, "Just fifteen more minutes of magic, people! Fifteen minutes of magic!"

______________________

Kim Brittingham is the author of a memoir, Read My Hips (Random House, May 2011)

HS Teacher Wages "Personal War" on Fat Students

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:07:30 -0400

I received the most ignorant e-mail today from an unenlightened buffoon of a high school physical education teacher in Overland Park, Kansas. She made the decision to call widespread negative attention to one particular slice of her school's student population: the fat kids.

Nancy Hopkins wants to create a "legacy" for herself -- humble soul that she is -- and she's doing it in the context of spreading outdated assumptions about health and the human body, all while further advancing weight stigma. And she wants ME to contribute.

She wants to open a school gym, but she doesn't seem to give a damn about all the thin kids routinely wolfing down those McDonald's two-cheeseburger value meals, or having bags of Fun-Yuns for breakfast. Apparently, as far as Hopkins is concerned, those kids can go to hell. This is about making a big splash, and therein, the skinny kids can't help her.

Hopkins wants to be remembered as the General Patton Phys-Ed teacher who came down hard -- oh, but benevolently so -- on those clearly flawed fatties. Never mind how they got that way, or how their body weight affects them in actuality, or what it does to their tender young psyches to be magnified and branded a capital-p-Problem like a bunch of crooks, or some red-handed old pervs being converged upon by multiple NBC camera men and Chris Hanson.

Meanwhile, the lanky sweet talker with his hand in a bag of Chips Ahoy gets to be teacher's pet. Because at least he looks like the pop culture ideal of pretty.

Never mind it all. Because Hopkins is on a mission to solidify her legacy in Kansas education -- so fast and furious, she can't even think straight.

Hopkins' goal to provide cardio equipment for students and teachers, to the disabled and autistic, and to the injured athlete are all well and good. But I smell plain old-fashioned bigotry here, because she's chosen to frame the whole thing -- in fact, open her entire e-mail plea -- with the proclamation that she, personally, is declaring war on fat kids.

(As a side note, I often wonder if all the fat people in the world successfully got thin, who would people like this turn their hatred on?)

People like Hopkins who are in a position of empowerment and influence over our children, as well as those in positions of even greater influence (like class A-asshole Toby Cosgrove of the Cleveland Clinic who thinks denying fat people employment is a benevolent way to promote wellbeing), need to be held accountable for the ignorant and often prejudiced beliefs by which they operate.

Somebody's got to do it.

So below is Ms. Hopkins' e-mail to me, and my response to her. Enjoy!

From: Nancy Hopkins <nhopkins@usd497.org>

Dear Ms. Brittingham,

I am a Physical Education teacher with 38 years experience and know the value of being physically fit. I’m waging a personal war on Obesity among our teens in my school. I am trying to come up with funds to create a Cardio Fitness Center in my school. Unfortunately, our funding isn’t able to help me accomplish this. So to do this, I am writing to celebrities in all areas of sports, entertainment and politics and asking for donations. This is my plea for a donation of an autographed photo, an autographed book/books, a piece of autographed memorabilia, artwork script, or a donation of your choice to my cause. In summer 2011, I am going to hold a celebrity auction with all the proceeds going to purchase additional equipment for the Cardio Fitness Center at my school. My vision is to have a place where kids can go and get a workout, hopefully generate interest in more students taking a Physical Education class, a place where athletes can speed along their rehabilitation of injuries, and a place for the faculty and staff to exercise after the work day that doesn’t cost them a membership fee. I currently have raised enough money for 19 pieces of equipment, but my goal is to purchase 32 pieces of equipment. (treadmills, rowing machines, ellipticals, Spinning bikes, etc. ) I currently have nineteen pieces of equipment purchased with donations from local citizens.

Free State High School has a pretty good number of handicapped, severely/multiply handicapped students, plus an excellent autism program. I want to provide a place for them to get exercise also and this is my solution. It was my plan to own my own gym upon my retirement, but I went bankrupt helping my sister pay medical bills and that isn’t going to happen. Therefore, I want to leave this as my legacy if I ever get the option to retire and would sincerely appreciate your help. Anything you are willing to offer will be graciously accepted. Thank you in advance. Here is a link to a story in our local paper about my project when I started last year. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/apr/29/free-state-volleyball-coach-collects-memorabilia-p/)

Sincerely,

Nancy Hopkins
Free State High School
4700 Overland Drive
Lawrence, KS 66049
785-832-6050

Dear Ms. Hopkins:

I believe in physical fitness. I engage in exercise on a regular basis, continually improving my cardio health by setting – and surpassing – my goals of longer and longer periods of activity at my maximum target heart rate.

If you’re as purposeful and mindful in your cardio exercise as I am, then you’re already aware of the rewards. In fact, I just had my annual physical yesterday and my physician complimented me on my strong and healthy heart.

However, as one of the “obese” against whom you are waging war, I don’t feel strongly compelled to come to the aid of your cause. It is misguided people like you, all-too-easily lulled into believing the media hype about the evils of fatness (planted there by the multi-billion-dollar weight loss industry) who do the most to make people unhealthy and unhappy – particularly children and teens.

Waging “war” on obesity drives millions of people unnecessarily into weight loss centers, where they think they’re engaging in some high-minded form of preventive maintenance. The ten pounds they might shed this summer will bounce back next year, bringing an additional ten pounds with it. In twenty years, they will be one of your obese casualties.

Declaring “war” on body fat sends young girls to their mirrors (not to their homework, not to the soccer field) where they scrutinize their normal, healthy bodies and develop psychological distractions that too often result in eating disorders that kill.

In fact, creating any kind of “war” in the world does nothing to put anyone at peace. And inner chaos is far more deadly than a fat ass.

You’d be doing more to advance the health of your unfortunate students by encouraging physical activity in all teens across the board, regardless of body size or shape. Regardless of how that activity may or may not affect one’s body size or shape.

One thing you’ve clearly failed to understand is that obese people can be quite strong and healthy underneath their fat, and slender people can be walking time bombs of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and more.

When you send out an e-mail to hundreds of people declaring “war on obesity”, you are spreading outdated assumptions that have more to do with the bubblegum messages of beauty magazines and sleazy commercials for Lipozene, than with legitimate science and impartial studies not funded by Jenny Craig. You really should correct that before your reputation as an educator takes an irreversible hit.

Very truly yours,

Kim Brittingham

_____

Now. Have you all seen "Witness"? I love that movie. Remember the scene where one of the bad guys gets corned to death in old man Lapp's grain silo?

If some rotten kid flicked a piece of dry corn at you some fine autumn day, you might sound like a real wimp running to your mommy and crying that "Joey Blackheart threw a KERNEL at me!" When your mother stopped wondering where she went wrong, she might send you for psychotherapy. If she was hip like that.

But as lessons from the Amish have taught us, many little kernels all piled together can have a devastating effect.

So it is with words and the convenient social memes they're used to spread.

Words are powerful things. Used in reckless repetition, they can create waves of dramatic change within a generation. They can spawn campaigns of genocide. They can turn us into Kool-Aid guzzling cultists.

I heard back from Ms. Hopkins. She wanted me to know that she has a PhD in Biomechanics, and that "you seem to be hung up on the wording of my proposal ("waging war on obesity"). So be it."

Why am I picking on Nancy Hopkins?

I'm picking on Nancy Hopkins because she's a kernel in the education system who's teaching our kids to discriminate against people with certain kinds of bodies -- my kind, actually, which is where it gets personal. And she's decided to go public with her message and is even using it to collect money. (For her legacy.)

Her e-mail was unsolicited and personally offensive, and all's fair in love and war. You remember "war", don't you Ms. Hopkins?

Ah, but words are just words. "So be it," she writes dismissively.

There were times in the not-so-distant past when Americans said things about specific groups of people that were based on hatred and ignorance. To join in on the nasty jokes was considered sporting, even good manners. And those same jokesters, when it came down to brass tacks, made decisions that made it difficult for some of those people to feel safe, make friends, get jobs, or even love openly. The beliefs gained popularity through words, and cute lil' catchphrases like "war on obesity" -- which delivers the inherent message that to pit the thin "us" against the fat "them" is the morally correct thing to do.

Men in handlebar moustaches used to stand around well-appointed drawing rooms in sophisticated Eastern cities, swirling brandy and accepting as fact that black men and women were closer to beasts than humans. (Some men in deep woods aluminum shacks and C Street townhouses still do.) But thank God most reasonable people rejected that idea, so the popular belief today is that among all shades of human beings, there are both animals and visionaries. Just as among all people there are those who are fit and healthy, and those who are not -- and the unfit don't dwell exclusively among the fatties.

Whether or not Ms. Hopkins wants to own up to it, she is part of the problem of size discrimination in this country. She contributes to it and perpetuates it. Like so many other tiny kernels of all-American corn, she has conveniently dismissed herself from any responsibility in the spreading of bias and ill-will. Like so many other foot soldiers in the war on population X, she isn't doing anything wrong. If there's any real damage happening here, the blame is on somebody else. Not her. All she did was throw some words around. The same words that all the other cornballs are using. Because it's easier than stopping to think. She'll comfort herself in the belief that her greater mission cancels out any careless use of language of which she may be guilty. Surely, it's over-sensitive nuts like me who are the problem, getting all hung up on words. So be it.

And meanwhile, the war rages on. Millions of people made to feel like outsiders in their own homes. In their own schools. Millions coerced into diets that are destined to fail, and onto operating room tables where their criminal bellies are butchered, their health permanently ruined -- and for the part of the fat person, it's all in a heartbreaking attempt to outrun the searchlights of the Gym Teacher Hopskinses of the world.

And so, to anyone who's thinking of volunteering for the war on obesity, and arrogantly suggests that exclusion, or ostracism, or negative attention, or forced marching, or casual insults, or psychological torment are kind things to do for anyone else's good, you need to think before you speak. Because every kernel you spit from between your teeth is ballistic. And some people don't like the way you're throwing that thing around.

When you declare war, you shouldn't be surprised when your chosen enemy defends itself.

Kim Brittingham

Author of Read My Hips (May 2011, Random House)

Pop Chips Says: Hate Your Body

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:06:21 -0400

Last night I dropped in on the annual Garden Party for New York's LGBT community center, where restaurants and food manufacturers were giving away samples of their edibles.  Pop Chips was among them.

In case you haven't tried them yet, Pop Chips are airy, puffed potato disks dusted with flavored powders in varieties like Sea Salt & Vinegar, Sour Cream & Onion and Barbecue. The Pop Chips booth was covered in its own advertising, which included a mini-billboard that read: "Love. Without the handles."

Surely, when Pop Chips settled on this phrase, they thought they were being cute. The creative department of their ad agency surely congratulated themselves on being adorable, too.

But the bottom line is this: Pop Chips has chosen to join the chorus of doubt-yourself demons that lulls Americans into a neurotic semi-sleep and spawns eating disorders. And those disorders include the explicit ones, the names and symptoms of which we're all too familiar, and the murky, muddy, subtle ones we don't even know we have.

When Pop Chips quips their products are "love without the handles", they're suggesting that "love handles" are something we shouldn't want -- neither on ourselves, nor anyone else whose bodies we might routinely look upon. They're advocating a superficial, snobbish, beach body-worshipping attitude, letting us know in their light, tittering way that love handles are an undesirable human feature.

Hey, guess what? Love handles are just flesh. Grabbable bits of flesh that you may or may not have around your abdomen. They say nothing about your underlying health, nor the strength of your body. When you whittle away your love handles, you are effecting something purely cosmetic.

And to each his or her own, where aesthetics are concerned. But when companies arrogantly try their hand at influencing larger societal attitudes in the process of selling their shit, they are crossing a dangerous line. There's more at stake than they're willing to admit or for which they're willing to take responsibility. And it's time they were held accountable for the fallout from those careless ways in which they wield their power.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, you may be thinking. This is just a stupid ad we're talking about. For potato chips. Get over it!

If that's what you're thinking, then you're kidding yourself too. They've got you by the balls, and bad.

I may be picking on one stupid ad. But it took decades of many stupid little ads working their collective mosaic evil to make us thee most eating-disordered splat of green on the planet.

Don't make the mistake of underestimating what these light, transitory ads can do.

They make kids ask, "Mommy, what are love handles?"

They make Mommies make self-deprecating jokes about their bodies to their impressionable children.

They make eight-year-old girls stand before their bathroom mirrors, squeezing and scrutinizing their middles.

An ad like Pop Chips' will make a fourteen-year-old boy hurl into a toilet somewhere. Yes, a boy. He'll be tearing up his esophagus, but he won't care. Besides, when he was six, he overheard his mother sharing her secret to puking noiselessly in a public restroom.

An ad like Pop Chips' will bore into the mind of a college freshman who's already terrified of getting fat -- terrified of the "freshman fifteen", a phrase and concept that's been so widely spread, I'm disgusted to have such handy recall of it.  The ad will swim with the other sharks in her manipulated young mind and she'll come to believe that some thick flesh around her middle makes her patently unlovable.

On a grand scale, these "innocent", "clever", stealthy ads turn women into soul-less robots, too distracted by their love handles and muffin tops and cankles to make any real contribution to the world. They turn us into chronically unhappy, pill-popping counters of calories.

They make us our own worst enemies. They generate hatred in the world -- hatred of ourselves, and hatred of others who dare to flaunt their undesirable features in public, uncorrected.

Pop Chips does not want you to be at peace. They're selling you air-popped potatoes with a side of inner turmoil. Doubt yourself, loathe yourself, nit-pick, toss and turn.

But they'd like you to take the responsibility. For listening to them.

Even if you started listening to them at ten years old, before you knew any better. Even if the grown-ups in your world weren't aware enough to assure you those ads are bullshit.

Sometimes the people behind these effed-up messages are completely brainwashed themselves. Really, when they make a phone call to have "Love without the handles" shrinkwrapped onto the side of a city bus, they have no concept just how sick the underlying meaning is.

Take Tom Forsythe, Vice President of Corporate Communications for General Mills. When his employer was criticized for promoting eating disorders in TV commercial for Yoplait, he told the Huffington Post, "We had no idea. The thought had never occurred to anyone (that the woman in the commercial was echoing eating-disordered thinking), and no one raised the point. We aren't sure that everyone saw the ad that way, but if anyone did, that was not our intent and is cause for concern. We thought it best to take (the commercial) down."

General Mills had no idea. A woman battling it out inside her head while standing before the open refrigerator -- to eat or not to eat -- came across as completely unremarkable to them.  They saw it as the American female norm.

And that's precisely the problem.

And these are the people in charge of what you hear and see every day.

Oh, but it's just a little joke. Right?  "Love without the handles"? Ha, ha.

Well here's a catchy new phrase I think I like even better:

"Life without Pop Chips".

Without Pop Chips and the other mindless, heads-up-their-well-compensated-butts, we-don't-care-how-what-we-do-affects-other-people people and their dopey products.

I used to buy Pop Chips from time to time. They're weirdly addictive. The Sea Salt & Vinegar ones were my favorite. But it's been a few weeks now since it occurred to me to buy them. That proves to me I can live without them.

So I will.

Besides, I like Pirate Booty a heck of a lot better anyway.

-- Kim Brittingham

Author of Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting and Live Large (May 2011, Random House Three Rivers Press)

An Angel in Bennigan's

Sat, 4 Jun 2011 05:06:23 -0400

I wonder what ever happened to Kate Gaws.

Twenty-odd years ago when Kate’s path crossed mine, I was too immature to truly appreciate what she did for me. Compassion was still a vague concept I had yet to whole-heartedly embrace and put into regular practice. I was self-absorbed. Otherwise, I would have thanked her properly.

I was working as a waitress at a Bennigan's chain restaurant in Philadelphia. Kate worked in the kitchen. She stood at the stainless steel window that divided the wait staff from the cooks' line, directing traffic, playing bad cop when grabby servers put their mitts all over plates that didn't belong to them. You didn't dare reach into that window when Kate was on duty -- you waited 'til she assembled your tray and called your ticket, or suffered her wrath.

She was a diminutive person but her presence was huge. She was stormy -- that's the word. When she walked into the restaurant to begin her shift, she stormed back into that kitchen. She walked with a wide, quick stride. Her eyes were the color of thunder skies, gray and changing, fascinating to watch. She could shoot you a look that would level you like a cyclone levels a trailer park. She didn't smile with her mouth; her eyes flashed lightning. Fleetingly, so that if you caught the sight of it, you felt somehow lucky, because you looked at just the right second, before it dissolved in a blue-white residue.

She wore her light brown hair in a ponytail, folded her arms often, was not afraid to take up space, and wore boots that looked like they could kill you, even if their leather was soft as butter. I guess it was the way she walked in them. And she had a way of talking that made her teeth seem as sharp-edged as a steel spatula.

Most people thought Kate had a chip on her shoulder. But I liked her. And besides, when she yelled at people, it was usually with good reason.

I always respected her rules and kept my hands out of the cooks' window. I'd raise my eyebrows to indicate I needed something and her voice would soften slightly and she'd ask, "What do you need?"

"I need a Salisbury Steak and a Chinese Chicken Salad."

"One sec," she'd mumble, then boom through the window, "Ticket 2285, I got a Salisbury Steak here, but where's my Chinese salad?!"

"How ya doin'?" I'd ask.

She'd roll her eyes and kink a corner of her mouth. And then her eyes would flash that glimmer of light.

* * *

During the last couple of months that I worked at Bennigan's, multiple crises developed at home. There was a death in the family, my beloved grandmother had major surgery, and my parents were losing the home I still lived in with them.

One day at work, I started to feel nervous. Waitressing was such a high-paced, multi-task-intensive job that it kept my mind occupied -- too much so for any fear to seep in. But it changed, suddenly, and in the midst of plunking down ketchup bottles and topping up Diet Cokes, I felt anxious.

And I felt anxious again the next day.

I determined it must be the gallons of coffee I drank throughout each shift. I was sure it was the caffeine making me feel so weird, so I cut out caffeine completely, in every form. I started drinking plain water instead.

But that didn’t fix it. As the days passed I grew more and more tense. I left for work each day, feeling afraid of feeling afraid again.

I was perpetually lightheaded. Something must be wrong with me, I thought. When I walked, my feet didn’t seem to be touching the ground, but rather landing on air and hovering just an inch above the floor. Maybe it's white bread, I thought. I do eat a lot of white bread. Maybe I should stop eating that and just stick to whole wheat instead. Maybe I'm turning diabetic. Oh my god, first my grandmother is sick and now me. I'm dying. And I'm so young!

I remember walking the circular path inside Bennigan's that separated the dining room from the bar in the center, balancing my tray on one hand because it was a rule -- we were never to leave the wait station without a tray. And as I walked I felt so nervous and the floor felt so spongy and soft under my shoes, and my body kept wanting to tilt towards the wall, so I walked as close to the wall as possible. Along the path, every now and then the wall was interrupted by a lower wall topped by a brass railing, and I raced through those sections especially fast. The missing wall at my shoulder, all that open space suddenly at my side, made me feel even more dizzy.

My arms were tingling and sore. I rubbed at them, rubbing rubbing madly, trying to look nonchalant as I did it in case someone was looking at me.

My head was swirling. This was it. This was death.

Coming around the circle to my section, I bypassed my tables of guests and descended a short flight of stairs into the outer ring of the dining room, into a small section that was closed. I made a beeline for the big corner booth that the wait staff had claimed as its own, for lounging during quick breaks and lunch hours. It was empty. I pulled a chair out of my way and dropped to my knees, pressing my forehead into the paisley-patterned carpet.

My friend Mike, a waiter, came to my side and kneeled down, putting a hand on my back. “Kim? What’s going on, are you OK?”

“What’s wrong with her?” someone else asked from above.

“I don’t know, I think she’s sick. Kim, are you OK? What do you need? Should we get a doctor?”

I was panting. “No. No. No doctors. I need…crackers. Soup crackers. And water. To keep my throat from drying up. It’s going to dry up and close.”

“I got it,” I heard a woman say and felt her leaving.

“Can you breathe, Kim? Does something hurt?”

“I’m going crazy,” I said, my voice breaking. “Mike, I’m just going crazy. I’m losing my mind.”

Some restaurant patrons from a nearby section turned around and looked.

“Can you get up? Why don’t you sit up in the chair over here?”

“No, no, I can’t get up!” I said in alarm. “I can’t lift my head from the floor. I have to keep my head against the floor. It’s the only thing that keeps the room still.”

“Here you go.” A handful of cracker packets were dropped on the carpet beside my head and a glass of water placed beside it. I started tearing into the crackers and stuffing them into my mouth, and guzzling the water awkwardly, lifting my head in short spurts to drink and keeping my eyes squeezed shut each time I did, to keep the vertigo at bay.

"Kim, listen, I'm going to drive you home. Can you stand up?"

In slow motion I lifted my forehead from the rough close-cropped pile of the carpet, careful, though, to keep it parallel with the floor. I slid one knee forward then lifted it, uncurling one leg to put a foot flat. Mike offered a hand. I took it, but kept my head down.

"It's important that I keep my head in this exact position," I explained hastily. "I can get up on my feet but I have to keep my face towards the ground."

Mike helped me onto both feet and I trembled against him as he walked me down to the main floor.

"Hold onto this door handle and don't move. I'll pull up with my car and come in and get you."

My anxiety started to dissipate as we drove away from the restaurant.

When I got home, no one was there. I walked slowly up the three floors to my bedroom and propped myself up in the bed, in a position that made me feel steady and still.

Days later I returned to Bennigan's to pick up my paycheck, feeling shameful and freakish. I had to wait in a chair outside the manager's office, at the back of the kitchen. People passed by and asked how I was feeling. I answered with a hollow "fine", but really I only meant, "fine, until I feel like that again."

Then Kate appeared. "I heard you were sick the other day," she said, arms crossed and one leg tucked behind the other. "Hope you're feeling OK."

I smiled wearily. "Thanks."

She looked to her left, then right, then leaned forward.

"I think I understand what happened to you," she said quietly.

"You do?"

She nodded. That quick, blunt nod. "You had a panic attack, didn't you?"

Those words made me nervous. Panic attack. I shook my head. "I'm not sure. I've had them before. But also, there might be something wrong with me. I was dizzy. For real. It was physical, you know what I mean? This wasn't just something I imagined. Maybe it's a blood disease. It's been coming on for a while now."

She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her lips, as if remembering something. When she opened her eyes again, she said, "Panic attacks can feel physical. They do that to you. You think you're having a heart attack, or you're going to pass out. Listen, I want you to know, I've been through exactly what you're going through. And you don't have to suffer forever. It does get better."

Then she reached into her pocket and fished out a pen. Looking around, she spied a stack of folded paper towels in a brown wrapper and tore off a corner. "Here." She scribbled her name and number on the scrap and handed to me. "The next time you feel that scared, I want you to call me. I can't promise I can be there right away, like if I'm at work or something. But I will come and get you as soon as I can. I really will."

The office door opened and George, our manager, emerged. Kate began to move away and I murmured, "Thanks."

In the following weeks, I rarely left the house. Some days were better than others. Some days I only felt the strangeness in waves. Other days it overtook me, and I'd feel terrified of leaving the third floor, where my bedroom was.

Then I felt like I couldn't leave my room.

Then I felt unable to leave my bed.

My mind kept drawing safety boundaries around things and the perimeter got smaller and smaller. When the boundaries couldn't get any smaller than my bed, I crouched down in the corner of my closet with the phone. I took the receiver in my trembling hands and read the piece of napkin with Kate’s phone number on it by the light of the glowing green keypad. With unsteady fingers, I dialed.

“Kate, remember when you said I should call you if I ever got scared again? Did you mean it?”

Calmly, she asked, “Are you having a panic attack right now?”

“Yes,” I peeped. “I’m in my bedroom closet and I can’t get out.”

“I’m coming to get you,” she said. “Tell me how to get to your house. Is anyone else home?”

“No.”

“Are the doors locked?”

“Yeah. Well, except for the back door.”

“All right, here’s what I’m gonna do. I'll be at your house in half an hour. I’ll wait in the car in front of your house for ten minutes, and then if I don’t see you, I’ll find the back door and I’ll come in and get you.”

The idea that Kate would have to find her way through our house, all the way up three flights of stairs to my embarrassingly untidy bedroom and literally pull me from the back of my closet was so humiliating, it motivated me to crawl out of my cave -- slowly, but successfully – and make my way to the living room window to wait for her.

She met me halfway across the lawn, in dye-speckled jeans, an oversized and untucked man’s white shirt, and boots.

“You all right?” she asked. She kept a respectful distance, but the tone of her voice let me know she was there to lean on if I needed her.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I breathed. “I feel better knowing you’re here.”

Kate took me into her home for a week. She let me stay on the safe island of her sofa every day while she went to work. When she was home, she talked to me, and listened to me, and was an overall stellar friend.

I learned what panic and anxiety attacks were. I wasn't completely convinced I didn't have a brain tumor or at least anemia, but it was the beginning of my understanding what panic and anxiety were -- a necessary precursor to taking the power back from them and becoming the master of my own mind. Kate did me a huge service.

It was weird the way I'd developed this sort of shifting agoraphobia, where the safety zones kept being re-drawn, so that Kate's apartment was safe, but anything outside of it wasn't. I was scared to go outside, but I knew I had to do something. Someday I would have to leave Kate's sofa.

"There's no rush," she told me kindly. "You can stay as long as you need to. But when you're ready, we'll start slow. How 'bout if we drive down to South Street and take a walk?"

The apprehension must've been written all over my face.

"Don't worry, we'll take it one step at a time," she reassured me. "The minute you feel scared, we'll go right back to the car. Even if you only walk three paces from the car, that'll still be an accomplishment."

So one day we tried. Kate's car was safe, but the sidewalk was not. Nevertheless, I walked beside her down South Street, past trendy boutiques and punk shops and New Age bookstores, and reminded myself I could turn around and go back to the car any time.

"Ever been in here?" she asked, pausing in front of a shop that sold books on Eastern religion, Buddha bookends and incense holders.

I nodded. "They have a pin in there I've always wanted," I said. "It's a rectangle with the earth on it, and it says 'One World' in Japanese."

"Wanna go in?"

I shook my head. "No. It would make me feel…trapped. But if you want to go in, I'll wait for you."

"You're sure?" I nodded. She pointed a finger at me. "You call out to me or knock on the window the second you feel afraid."

I was proud of myself for being able to stand still for so long, in perfect serenity, and let people and cars and troubles and thoughts just pass by and fade away as I remained in place, waiting for Kate.

She emerged with a green paper bag.

"What did you get?" I asked cheerfully. She pulled out a book on Wicca. I smiled. I'd memorized the titles from her entire Wicca bookshelf in her apartment, with so many hours to kill while she was at work. Then she reached into the bottom of the bag and pulled out the earth pin.

A part of me wanted to cry, but I remained composed. I withheld so much in those days. I don't know why. But I had enough gratitude and social grace to thank her as I took it into my hands.

I did go home soon after, and my panic rebounded severely, to the point where my safety circle dictated that I had to stay on my bed with my legs elevated on the edge of my dresser – or I'd die. It was terribly inconvenient. I thought, "This is ridiculous" and with terror flooding my body and every part of me trembling, I dropped my legs from the dresser's edge and made my way down to the first floor of the house.

"Mom, you need to take me to Dr. Kimmel. I'm having panic attacks and I can't function. I want medication."

Her face blanched but she followed my directive, with few questions.

After a deep medicated sleep, I woke up the next morning feeling like someone in a laundry detergent commercial, sitting up and raising my arms joyfully to the sky as I stretched and bounded out of bed into a beautiful day. The world was still. My body and mind were calm. It was a pharmaceutical miracle.

It's embarrassing for me to admit this even now, but the next couple of times I saw Kate after that, I felt dreadfully awkward. Things came out of my mouth that didn't even sound like me. I don't know what possessed me. I don't remember that clearly and it makes me cringe to even try, but I seem to recall being in Bennigan's as a customer months later and seeing her walk by, and gesturing her over and jokingly berating her for not calling me. But it came out sounding much harsher than I intended and I sensed she was taken aback.

And I remember calling her on the phone and "joking", again, that I'd been back to Bennigan's, and now that I knew she'd switched to the cook's side of the window, I hoped she wasn't working the dessert station, because my Death by Chocolate really sucked. Again, sounding harsh and obnoxious, and not even understanding then why I couldn’t just relax and be a kinder, gentler self.

Maybe I felt awkward because I let her see me at my most vulnerable, and I let her help me through it. Awkward too, perhaps, because deep down I didn't think I deserved the kindness she gave so unselfishly, and I wanted to prove myself right. Maybe that, mixed with the reality of not being very well-practiced in receiving such unabashed caring. Maybe I hated myself for being vulnerable and I took it out on her. Maybe I was projecting some resentment onto her that was really meant for my mom, who should have been the one doing the job Kate was doing.

So let me say now to Kate Gaws, wherever she is, what I was too muddled to say back then: Thank you, Kate, for having the heart to reach out to me when you recognized the nature of my crisis. Thank you for letting me past that tough exterior and letting me see a glimpse of the loving, generous spirit inside, even if the girl I was didn't deserve your efforts. Thank you for putting your own heart on the line for me by reaching out. Thank you for letting me into your home. Thank you for walking with me on South Street. Thank you for your patience. And thanks again for the pin.

The spirit I am now holds a space for the spirit you were then. Within the vast universe that is my heart and mind, there's a bubble, like a little protected phone booth-like bubble floating out to the right, and that's the place where I keep my gratitude and regard for you. If I could go back and do things over, I'd say all of this, and more. I'd say, "I don’t know if you're much for hugs, Kate, but can I hug you?” And I'd give you the warmest embrace ever, and put my hand atop your feisty little head, and tell you we must always, always remain connected. I'd ask you if you felt comfortable enough to sit with me someplace beautiful, so I could transmit my thanks to you through the silence, through my breath and the beating of my heart, in thrum with the pulsing world around us. I'd take both your hands in mine and say, "Never doubt that while you were on this earth, you didn't understand the meaning of friendship. It's something you do well."

Last I knew, Kate went into the military and was working towards becoming a nurse. But she saved at least one life long before she packed her duffle bag.

Mother's Day Above the Neck

Tue, 10 May 2011 09:05:53 -0400

by Kim Brittingham

We're crowded into a booth at the IHOP. It is Mother's Day.

My partner Lori works to maintain a friendly tone as she probes her father. She is tracing a backwards road, trying fruitlessly to understand, "now, what exactly do you think Sadam Hussein had to do with 9/11?"

Meanwhile, I smile patiently and nod at regular intervals as her 88-year-old mother plies me with small talk.

"You have such a lovely complexion," Lucy tells me. Then she lowers her voice and gestures limply at everything below my neck. "I won't mention anything else."

Later I will post this anecdote on my Facebook page, and friends will leave comments of shock and outrage. As the author of a fat-positive, body image-related memoir, they might complete the scene in their minds with me setting my mother-in-law's ass straight. Busting some preconceived notions, proclaiming my self-pride -- all punctuated by a clattering fork, and a dramatic Julia Sugarbaker-style exit.

But I won't be making any grand gestures today. You see, my mother-in-law actually thinks she's being kind. And in her advancing state of senility, she is incapable of understanding otherwise.

Lucy accepts that fat is an undesirable thing, and assumes that every woman who isn't slender must desperately want to be. Of course she must -- what woman in her right mind would willingly sign up to be ugly? For Lucy, life is simple -- as simple as an easy Sunday under the blue sky of her native North Carolina, swaying in a hammock with one toe dragging in the piney dirt of the land she was raised on. Living is easy when you realize there's a right and a wrong way to be, in every situation. And thin is always right for a woman.

When she tells me she "won't mention anything else" on my body, Lucy is assuring me she understands how embarrassed I must be by my physicality, and that she isn't about to call any special attention to it -- ironically enough. To her, what I am is "a shame". And she feels for me in that hand-patting way. As though I was born with a cleft palette or scorched my face scarlet in a kitchen accident.

She is incapable of digesting the fact that I've come to accept my body just the way it is, even see the beauty in it, and that my constant efforts to live healthfully have nothing to do with waging battle on a bathroom scale. If I lose weight as a natural result of my eating and exercise habits, so be it. I know from experience that putting the focus on "weight loss" is a sure way to lose one's life to an empty obsession -- one that usually results in big rebound gains anyway.

But Lucy, like millions of others, doesn't get that.

Sometimes in a clumsy but well-meaning effort at drawing us together and making conversation, my beloved Lori reports to her parents how hard I worked at the gym that week. As though trying to convince them I'm not as apathetic and slovenly as my girth might suggest. Her mother blinks -- unable to compute. Fat woman? Exercising? As though we've told her that dogs worldwide suddenly started speaking today. In Polish. "Well," she drawls. "That's nice."

"I tell you, I don't have an appetite anymore," Lucy tells me, cutting into a link sausage. "When you get to be my age, you won't hardly want to eat at all!"

I suppose I could try to explain to Lucy that shame seldom leads to healthy change, whether it comes from within or without. I could give a sermon on how I'm more deeply fulfilled, more excited about life and happy since I claimed my place as a first-class citizen of the universe, rather than some poor lost soul who fell from grace into a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. But I believe it is all beyond her comprehension.

Lucy comes from a world where a girl grew up to get a permanent wave in order to snag a husband, so she could take her place behind a Kenmore range, perfect the art of the casserole without complaint, and pop out babies without ever uttering the word "pregnant". A world where middle class women watched their waists and sucked down Alba shakes, or else got sent to analysts to be "fixed" for not caring anymore. Of her own mother, Lori recalls, "She stopped getting dressed up and doing her hair after I was born. She became so frumpy and matronly at such a young age. You wouldn't believe it -- she used to be so tall and stylish and blond."

I feel myself withdrawing from our scene at the IHOP. I nod less. I focus on my omelet. I pretend I don't notice Lori's father watching me eat, as he often does. As though observing an animal in the zoo. The curious gorging habits of the American Fat Woman. He doesn't think I know.

Despite understanding the source, it still saddens me a little to be treated like some circus freak. Maybe even less for myself than for others who don't have as much courage as I do, to strut around in whatever clothes I damn well please and actually get a swagger going in a swimsuit.

"You know, when you get to be my age," Lucy repeats, "You won't hardly want to eat at all!"

She retains hope for my future.

What good would it do to try and enlighten an old lady? Twenty years earlier, Lori took her mother angrily to task for prejudices and intolerances that even maternal instinct couldn't overcome. I think she was right to make her mother take responsibility then. But today she's a poor soul who devolves into infantile whimpering if she has to pee and the bathroom is occupied. One's impulse is to give her an extra pillow -- not give her something to think about.

Despite her questionable remarks about my body, Lucy is outwardly warm and kind, treating me to sincere embraces and kisses upon my cheek, accepting me as her daughter's partner. During our civil union, she even sang at me, "Here comes the bride," then giggled. It's the best she will ever do, and it's enough.

"Listen," Lucy says over her pancakes, "When you get to be my age, you won't have hardly any appetite left. You won't want to eat at all!" Then she turns and inserts herself into Lori's conversation with her dad. She announces she doesn't like Obama. Of this woman who refers to Bill O'Reilly as her "boyfriend", we already knew this. "And it's not because of the color of his skin," she offers. Lori looks at her blankly. "It's not!" Lucy insists. "I can tell by the look on your face you don't believe me, but it's true!"

We pay the check and I walk ahead of the others. I watch from across the restaurant as Lori and her parents work their way haltingly through the crowded dining room. Lucy stops at the table of an African-American family and coos at a beaming newborn peeking over her mother's shoulder. She pauses to place a gentle, arthritic alabaster hand on the head of a little Latina girl waiting in line with her parents. "What's your name?" Lucy asks sweetly. The girl stares at her with big eyes. "I see, you're not gonna tell me," Lucy laughs. We leave.

After the good-byes, Lori and I slide into our car in silence. It's like a pre-heated oven in there, hungrily awaiting a sheet of raw Carolina biscuits. Lori opens the sun roof with the push of a button. We start to drive.

"Don't worry now," I say in my best Paula Deen, "When you get to be my age, you won't want to eat at ALL!"

Lori snickers.

"And I am NAWT a racist!" I continue. "And just to prove you wrong, I'm gonna touch every brown baby in this place on my way out the door!"

Lori laughs so hard, no sound escapes her gaping mouth. She pounds the steering wheel and tears start to roll down her cheeks. She catches her breath and her laughter grinds out of her throat.

We're motoring back home again, to our own tiny world, where things make sense to us.